Interior of Church, Tepotzotlán, Mexico

Tina Modotti learned photography from her mentor and lover, Edward Weston, with whom she lived in Mexico for several years in the 1920s. During that time, the pair would often photograph together, and produced still lifes, portraits of friends and locals, nudes, and architectural studies notable for their graphic clarity. This photograph of the interior of a church was made on a visit to Tepotzotlán during Holy Week in April 1924. In his Daybooks, Weston noted Modotti’s satisfaction with the pictures she made there, especially her “abstraction done in the tower”: “She is very happy over it and well she may be,” he wrote. “I, myself, would be pleased to have done it.” Modotti heightened the ambiguity of this already abstract composition by printing it with the platinum process, which registers subtle gradations of tone.