III.2.4 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 734189
This article by noted Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) definitively positions photography within the realm of the visual arts. Written at the height of the Mexican mural movement, Rivera establishes a parallel between using oils and brushes (the essential tools of the painter) and employing a camera. Rivera emphasizes that a photographer must master complex technical skills and be able to successfully manipulate an image in the darkroom. In his text, he is awestruck by the influential American photographer Edward Weston (1886–1958), who worked in Mexico intermittently between 1923 and 1927. The muralist is particularly impressed by Weston’s ability to combine the aesthetic sensibility of the North with the vivid artistic tradition of Latin America. Rivera also briefly mentions Italian-born photographer Tina Modotti (1896–1942), whom he refers to as Weston’s “pupil”; he writes that her photographs are “marvels of sensibility” and that her work “harmonizes exactly” with the passion of Mexico. This translation by Frances Toor—founder of the bilingual cultural magazine Mexican Folkways (1925–37)—is from the article’s original publication [“Edward Weston y Tina Moddoti [sic],” Mexican Folkways (Mexico City), vol. 2, no. 6 (1926): 16–17]. It has been reprinted by Raquel Tibol [Diego Rivera, Arte y Política (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1979)] and Xavier Moyssén [Diego Rivera, Textos de Arte (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1986)].
FOR A LONG TIME EVERYONE HAS ACCEPTED THE FACT that photography liberated painting, defining the field between the IMAGE copy of the physical aspect of the world, and the PLASTIC CREATION, within which falls the art of painting. [That is,] for whose particular REALITY PARALLEL TO NATURE the image of the exterior world may not be employed; but it is indispensable for the existence of this reality TO ESTABLISH ITS OWN ORDER.
More than eighteen years ago [Alfred] Stieglitz, the great photographer, was one of the first men in New York City to fight in favor of the work of [Pablo] Picasso, the great painter and my comrade.
Today, our sensibility is no longer deceived by the novelty of the processes of the camera and we, modern men, feel clearly the personality of each one of the authors in different photographs made under the same conditions of time and space. We feel the personality of the photographer as clearly as that of the painter, draughtsman, or engraver.
In reality, the camera and the manipulations of the photographic workroom are a TECHNIQUE just as oil, pencil, or watercolor, and above all persists the expression of the human personality that makes use of it.
One day I said to Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, as we were looking over some of their work: “I am sure if Don Diego Velázquez were to return to life, he would be a photographer,” and they replied that the same thought had occurred to them. Naturally, people who do not understand will think this is a modern slander against the King of Painting of “pure” Spanish descent, but all those who are not stupid will agree with me, because the talent of Velázquez manifesting itself in the COINCIDENCE with the image of the physical world, his genius would have led him to select the TECHNIQUE most adequate for the purpose; that is to say, photography. (Recall that the greatest subtlety, the greatest strength, just as the greatest originality of Velázquez are to be found in his VALUES. And I believe that people like Weston and Tina are on a parallel scale, similar to that of the painters and other plastic workers—of their kind and category—which in the case of Weston and Tina are of the highest.
Few are the modern plastic expressions that have given me purer and more intense joy than the masterpieces that are frequently produced in the work of Edward Weston, and I confess that I prefer the productions of this great artist to the majority of contemporary, significant paintings.
The talent of Weston has its place among the present plastic workers of the first rank, although he may be less celebrated than they and although in his country, the United States, they may have not as yet completely discovered him, and that in Mexico—where we have the good fortune of having him—he may be ignored. . . . Just as is everything which THE VOICE OF THE FOREIGN MASTER DOES NOT ADMIRE ORDER. Any day that Weston may wish or any day that some outside force may break through the modesty and indifference that are characteristic of him, he will astonish THE FOREIGN MASTER of the poor intellectual bourgeoisie of Mexico with his work. Then, in Mexico, they will know that he exists, and the “grumpies” will know that there is not in Europe, by far, a photographer of such dimensions as Weston.
Edward Weston is THE AMERICAN ARTIST; I mean, one whose sensibility contains the extreme modernity of the PLASTICITY OF THE NORTH AND THE LIVING TRADITION OF THE LAND OF THE SOUTH.
Tina Modotti, his pupil, has created marvels of sensibility on a plane, perhaps more abstract, more aerial, even more intellectual, as is natural for an Italian temperament. Her work flowers perfectly in Mexico and harmonizes exactly with our passion.