00:00:25.225 --> 00:00:27.861
Tonight is my last night in Mexico.

00:00:27.861 --> 00:00:30.096
How can I sleep?

00:00:31.231 --> 00:00:34.234
Tomorrow they will put me on a boat
bound for fascist Europe.

00:00:34.734 --> 00:00:37.203
Wrenching me
from the only place that ever felt like

00:00:37.203 --> 00:00:38.538
home.

00:00:45.211 --> 00:00:47.714
I've given away most of my belongings.

00:00:47.714 --> 00:00:50.050
I'll keep only what's most precious to me.

00:00:50.050 --> 00:00:53.019
My camera
and the memories stored in these journals

00:00:53.019 --> 00:00:54.754
and letters.

00:00:59.793 --> 00:01:02.796
Mexico will always claim me
no matter where I go.

00:01:03.296 --> 00:01:06.299
I'll lie here and wait for the sun.

00:01:06.332 --> 00:01:07.801
With my eyes closed.

00:01:07.801 --> 00:01:10.937
The past surges up like the ash
from Popocatépetl.

00:01:36.029 --> 00:01:38.064
Los Angeles, 1920.

00:01:38.064 --> 00:01:39.999
My English is perfect.

00:01:39.999 --> 00:01:43.002
I've left behind
the Italian circle of my family.

00:01:43.303 --> 00:01:45.839
The world is being born again.

00:01:45.839 --> 00:01:48.842
I'm being born again.

00:01:58.718 --> 00:01:59.953
I'm 22.

00:01:59.953 --> 00:02:02.822
A part time seamstress and actress.

00:02:02.822 --> 00:02:05.291
But my mind is ravenous.

00:02:05.291 --> 00:02:07.760
I seek out the poets and painters.

00:02:07.760 --> 00:02:09.863
The writers and visionaries.

00:02:09.863 --> 00:02:12.799
Bohemian soirees with oysters and Saki.

00:02:13.967 --> 00:02:15.568
I live with an artist.

00:02:15.568 --> 00:02:17.770
Robo de l'Abrie Richey

00:02:17.770 --> 00:02:21.307
We paint batiks, read poetry
and go to lectures

00:02:21.307 --> 00:02:24.310
on Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde.

00:02:28.381 --> 00:02:31.518
I am at a party,
giddy from talk and bootleg liquor.

00:02:31.951 --> 00:02:34.921
When I feel his look graze my back.

00:02:35.221 --> 00:02:38.191
Edward Weston, the famous photographer.

00:02:40.326 --> 00:02:41.494
No one's ever looked at me

00:02:41.494 --> 00:02:44.497
so intensely before.

00:02:48.768 --> 00:02:51.771
She's so lovely.

00:03:05.685 --> 00:03:08.688
Duplicity is surprisingly easy.

00:03:09.222 --> 00:03:11.191
A candle in a window.

00:03:11.191 --> 00:03:12.859
Secret letters.

00:03:12.859 --> 00:03:14.561
A Streetcar to Edward's studio.

00:03:14.561 --> 00:03:17.564
While Roubaix sleeps.

00:03:20.667 --> 00:03:22.835
I feel like I'm swooning.

00:03:22.835 --> 00:03:25.838
Drowning in a sea of intoxicating feeling.

00:03:26.639 --> 00:03:29.642
I never want to wake up.

00:03:55.201 --> 00:03:56.169
These are negatives

00:03:56.169 --> 00:03:59.505
that I will store in a black envelope
in a bottom drawer on my desk.

00:04:00.540 --> 00:04:04.077
They're between Tina
and I to the outer world

00:04:04.077 --> 00:04:06.913
they would only signal
my betrayal of wife and children.

00:04:08.214 --> 00:04:10.149
But my marriage is killing me.

00:04:10.149 --> 00:04:13.853
And if I stay, I will mentally poison
all around me.

00:04:13.886 --> 00:04:15.121
Destroy them.

00:04:15.121 --> 00:04:18.091
My work, her.

00:04:33.873 --> 00:04:35.742
December 1922.

00:04:35.742 --> 00:04:38.811
Robo leaves for Mexico
to teach at an outdoor art school.

00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:42.649
I live in a fever of passion

00:04:42.649 --> 00:04:45.652
in Edward's studio.

00:04:48.254 --> 00:04:50.323
A month later, a telegram arrives.

00:04:50.323 --> 00:04:51.291
Do not come.

00:04:51.291 --> 00:04:52.892
Have light form smallpox.

00:04:52.892 --> 00:04:53.793
Details later.

00:04:53.793 --> 00:04:56.763
Robo.

00:05:00.366 --> 00:05:02.635
In a week, he's dead.

00:05:02.635 --> 00:05:05.638
I'm overwhelmed with grief and guilt.

00:05:05.872 --> 00:05:07.440
He begged me to come.

00:05:07.440 --> 00:05:09.642
Mexico is an artist's Paradise.

00:05:09.642 --> 00:05:12.645
He wrote.

00:05:18.451 --> 00:05:20.620
A year and a half after Bobo's death.

00:05:20.620 --> 00:05:23.623
I bought a boat with Edward,
destined for Mexico.

00:05:29.295 --> 00:05:30.596
You could say we were drawn

00:05:30.596 --> 00:05:34.367
by fate or serendipity
or by a love of adventure.

00:05:35.768 --> 00:05:38.171
You could say we were looking for a place
that matched our

00:05:38.171 --> 00:05:40.106
own capacity for reinvention.

00:05:50.249 --> 00:05:51.651
We have an agreement.

00:05:51.651 --> 00:05:52.885
Edward has no Spanish.

00:05:52.885 --> 00:05:55.955
So I'll take on all the daily
responsibilities of the business.

00:05:56.389 --> 00:05:59.959
And he'll instruct me in photography
and supply me with room and board.

00:06:00.626 --> 00:06:03.096
I'll be his assistant, his protege,

00:06:03.096 --> 00:06:06.099
and, of course, his lover.

00:06:08.468 --> 00:06:11.738
His son Chandler
follows us on deck with his small camera.

00:06:11.871 --> 00:06:14.874
At 14, he's
so eager for his father's approval.

00:06:16.442 --> 00:06:18.378
But Edward sits there,

00:06:18.378 --> 00:06:20.513
looks deep into the ocean.

00:06:22.081 --> 00:06:24.851
We've always had our own lives to hide in,

00:06:24.851 --> 00:06:27.687
to veil from the gaze of each other.

00:06:27.687 --> 00:06:30.690
Now we are thrown together
like three castaways.

00:06:50.076 --> 00:06:51.744
Avenida de [?}

00:06:52.178 --> 00:06:54.814
3 Colonia Nápoles de Cuba.

00:06:55.415 --> 00:06:58.418
A short trolley ride from the city.

00:07:01.654 --> 00:07:03.089
Our house is barred.

00:07:03.089 --> 00:07:05.925
Heavily shattered, as if waiting attack.

00:07:05.925 --> 00:07:09.929
The very first night, we were awakened
by gunfire under our windows.

00:07:10.263 --> 00:07:11.164
And then silence.

00:07:11.164 --> 00:07:13.466
Not even audible footsteps.

00:07:13.800 --> 00:07:16.803
Our cook tells us
the ghost of Zapata still rides.

00:07:19.672 --> 00:07:21.040
Chandler is enchanted with

00:07:21.040 --> 00:07:24.043
this adventure and has explored
every corner of the house.

00:07:24.277 --> 00:07:27.280
So wonderful to see the boy
in such boisterous, good humor.

00:07:28.414 --> 00:07:31.417
One attribute of our new abode
I have not enjoyed.

00:07:31.451 --> 00:07:35.221
Las pulgas, the fleas have literally
attacked me from all sides.

00:07:35.221 --> 00:07:36.189
And Chandler too.

00:07:36.189 --> 00:07:38.624
Nothing seems to stop them.

00:07:38.624 --> 00:07:42.428
I believe they eat and fatten on
the powder with which I sprinkle my bed.

00:07:43.329 --> 00:07:47.133
Our dueña tells Tina and I
that we will soon become acclimated.

00:07:47.800 --> 00:07:51.170
But judging by the constant mooing
and scratching of the strays,

00:07:51.704 --> 00:07:54.707
we are doomed to have little relief.

00:08:02.648 --> 00:08:06.986
Today, I've learned to bargain at the Mercado
like the most venerable Senora.

00:08:07.620 --> 00:08:11.424
And we are now equipped with
pueblaware for food and flowers.

00:08:11.824 --> 00:08:14.827
Two brass candlesticks for 3 pesos each.

00:08:14.994 --> 00:08:17.697
And though we can hardly afford luxuries,

00:08:17.697 --> 00:08:20.366
a string of 18 amber beads,

00:08:20.366 --> 00:08:24.003
cheap at 2 pesos, even on an empty stomach.

00:08:24.136 --> 00:08:25.671
We need beauty.

00:08:29.942 --> 00:08:31.210
Here is life.

00:08:31.210 --> 00:08:33.479
Vital. Intense. Black and white.

00:08:33.479 --> 00:08:34.814
Never gray.

00:08:34.814 --> 00:08:38.985
I was tempted to go tourist with my
camera, making snaps of street scenes.

00:08:39.585 --> 00:08:41.254
All seemed like a stage setting.

00:08:41.254 --> 00:08:44.190
Unreal and hopelessly picturesque.

00:08:44.190 --> 00:08:47.527
I had this premonition before we left
and used to get angry with those

00:08:47.527 --> 00:08:48.594
who would remark, oh,

00:08:48.594 --> 00:08:51.831
you will have such a wonderful opportunity
to make pictures in Mexico!

00:08:52.732 --> 00:08:55.568
But my work in Mexico will be a fight
to avoid its

00:08:55.568 --> 00:08:58.437
natural picturesque ness.

00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:03.809
Wandering down Avenida de Independencia.

00:09:03.809 --> 00:09:05.011
We found a theater.

00:09:05.011 --> 00:09:08.047
And there on the screen,
preserved for all eternity,

00:09:08.347 --> 00:09:12.618
was that wild Italian vamp
that mud, dirty woman.

00:09:13.252 --> 00:09:16.822
We couldn't stop giggling, much
to the bewilderment of the other patrons,

00:09:18.491 --> 00:09:22.261
that my past should catch up with me
here in the heart of Mexico City

00:09:22.261 --> 00:09:26.065
would seem tragic if it were
not such a ludicrous pantomime.

00:09:48.821 --> 00:09:51.357
The news of Villa's murder is unnerving.

00:09:51.357 --> 00:09:53.292
But we came to Mexico with our eyes wide

00:09:53.292 --> 00:09:56.295
open, knowing
we were walking into a revolution.

00:09:57.363 --> 00:09:59.999
And if it was political serenity
we wanted,

00:09:59.999 --> 00:10:03.502
we could have stayed in California.

00:10:50.883 --> 00:10:53.886
The sun is so hot at noon.

00:10:54.186 --> 00:10:57.189
15 minutes and you lose boundaries.

00:10:57.289 --> 00:11:00.292
Melt into the dust and adobe.

00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:02.028
Just like Italy.

00:11:02.028 --> 00:11:05.031
When I was a child.

00:11:10.870 --> 00:11:13.873
He doesn't know how much
I'm giving him now.

00:11:14.340 --> 00:11:17.043
The arch of my back.

00:11:17.043 --> 00:11:20.046
My head turned to the light,

00:11:20.112 --> 00:11:23.149
breath held while he ticks off
the seconds.

00:11:26.018 --> 00:11:29.689
I never tire of watching her
with all my other nudes.

00:11:29.689 --> 00:11:33.059
I only wanted the curve of a breast,
the light falling on her belly.

00:11:33.292 --> 00:11:36.295
An esthetically stimulating form.

00:11:36.662 --> 00:11:38.197
But with Tina,

00:11:38.197 --> 00:11:41.200
I can't separate her body from her face.

00:11:41.267 --> 00:11:43.202
I shoot a dozen negatives in a long shot.

00:11:46.672 --> 00:11:49.275
I held my breath while developing.

00:11:49.275 --> 00:11:51.610
The shadows are sharp and well-defined,

00:11:51.610 --> 00:11:54.613
a good contrast
between the flesh and blanket.

00:11:55.081 --> 00:11:58.050
The platinum paper
makes printing slow and tedious,

00:11:58.050 --> 00:12:00.986
but it gives the final print
very rich tones.

00:12:00.986 --> 00:12:04.390
I have to finish all printing
before our first public show.

00:12:16.068 --> 00:12:16.702
I have done

00:12:16.702 --> 00:12:19.705
what I expected to do,
created a sensation.

00:12:19.805 --> 00:12:21.474
The attendance has been phenomenal,

00:12:21.474 --> 00:12:24.477
including many of the most important men
in the city.

00:12:26.045 --> 00:12:29.048
The intensity of the appreciation
has keyed me to a high pitch.

00:12:29.548 --> 00:12:33.152
Yet viewing my work day
after day on the walls has depressed me

00:12:33.152 --> 00:12:37.757
greatly, too much pictorial frippery
and obvious staging.

00:12:38.023 --> 00:12:40.993
Too much under the
influence of Stieglitz.

00:12:41.660 --> 00:12:43.262
The prints of Tina, in any case,

00:12:43.262 --> 00:12:46.232
have proved a profitable investment.

00:12:46.499 --> 00:12:49.101
We've created a scandal with the nudes.

00:12:49.101 --> 00:12:53.472
Half of Mexico City claims
to have been my lover. To the other half,

00:12:53.806 --> 00:12:56.509
I am the chica prostituta.

00:12:56.509 --> 00:12:58.210
Puta vampiresa.

00:12:58.811 --> 00:13:00.412
The church trembles.

00:13:00.412 --> 00:13:02.448
Lock up your men. Mexico.

00:13:02.448 --> 00:13:05.451
I might devour all of them.

00:13:09.555 --> 00:13:12.424
The phone has not stopped
ringing at our studio.

00:13:12.424 --> 00:13:16.262
Invitations for dinners, drinks,
but most importantly,

00:13:16.462 --> 00:13:19.799
dozens of new appointments
for portrait sittings.

00:13:23.068 --> 00:13:25.037
We were all there.

00:13:25.971 --> 00:13:28.174
Nahui Olin: model,

00:13:28.174 --> 00:13:31.177
painter, feminist, sexual adventurous,

00:13:31.777 --> 00:13:36.048
lover of Dr. Atl,
godfather of the Mexican folk

00:13:36.048 --> 00:13:39.552
art movement, muralist, agitator, mystic.

00:13:40.653 --> 00:13:42.788
Jean Charlotte French

00:13:42.788 --> 00:13:45.791
painted the first frescoes,
the National Preparatory School.

00:13:46.125 --> 00:13:49.261
Francis Toor, American anthropologist,

00:13:49.428 --> 00:13:51.797
editor of Mexican Folkways.

00:13:53.432 --> 00:13:56.402
Lupe Rivera, Guadalupe Mad Woman.

00:13:56.602 --> 00:13:59.171
Well, who wouldn't be married to

00:13:59.171 --> 00:14:02.174
El Grande famoso Diego Rivera?

00:14:02.541 --> 00:14:03.809
And me.

00:14:03.809 --> 00:14:07.346
Anita Brenner, aspiring
Mexican art critic and journalist.

00:14:08.280 --> 00:14:12.751
This was the core of our familia
germinated out of weekly fiestas at Tina

00:14:12.751 --> 00:14:15.921
and Edwards, an evangelical belief in art

00:14:16.322 --> 00:14:19.225
and a love of dancing and talk till dawn.

00:14:38.510 --> 00:14:41.513
El maestro has been the talk of the town
all week.

00:14:42.081 --> 00:14:45.084
Monday, students
stormed into the courtyard

00:14:45.150 --> 00:14:49.688
and defaced the murals,
shouting “Down with Rivera's monkeys!

00:14:50.356 --> 00:14:53.225
Death to the arbiter of ugliness!”

00:14:53.225 --> 00:14:56.228
Determined to lynch the man himself.

00:14:57.062 --> 00:14:59.331
Now we watch as the painters climb

00:14:59.331 --> 00:15:02.334
the scaffolds
with large pistols in their pockets.

00:15:19.618 --> 00:15:21.353
Look here. We love art so much

00:15:21.353 --> 00:15:24.990
that the government pays us
eight pesos a day like any [?].

00:15:25.925 --> 00:15:28.560
This is how we remember our revolution.

00:15:28.560 --> 00:15:32.097
Here on the walls
of every public building in Mexico.

00:15:32.965 --> 00:15:35.567
Do you know why we work 20 hours a day?

00:15:35.567 --> 00:15:38.304
Because we
Mexicans are forgetting already.

00:15:38.304 --> 00:15:41.307
And the fighting only stopped
three years ago.

00:15:45.210 --> 00:15:47.012
Do you see these workers?

00:15:47.012 --> 00:15:50.316
These are the workers of Rio Blanco,
Ghana, who led the first strikes

00:15:50.349 --> 00:15:51.684
against the dictatorship.

00:15:55.287 --> 00:15:56.889
Here are the 15,000 who

00:15:56.889 --> 00:15:59.892
joined Red battalions in the city
to fight for labor rights.

00:16:00.092 --> 00:16:02.795
Rights enshrined in our constitution.

00:16:02.795 --> 00:16:06.131
Without them, no general or politician
could win the revolution

00:16:06.465 --> 00:16:09.034
or keep themselves in power.

00:16:10.436 --> 00:16:12.638
Diego says Zapata and Villa

00:16:12.638 --> 00:16:15.541
should never have handed over their arms.

00:16:15.541 --> 00:16:18.544
He says President Obregon is a fox

00:16:18.777 --> 00:16:21.780
who will betray the people,
as they all have.

00:16:21.780 --> 00:16:25.217
The revolution is a snake
which has swallowed its tail,

00:16:25.217 --> 00:16:28.754
he says, and its history coils and twists

00:16:28.754 --> 00:16:31.757
in unpredictable turns.

00:16:41.333 --> 00:16:44.570
September 21st, Edward and I to 6:00.

00:16:44.570 --> 00:16:49.475
Chocolate with Diego and Lupe Rivera
and Javier Guerrero, Diego's assistant.

00:16:50.309 --> 00:16:52.978
A passionate discussion
broke out, with Javier

00:16:52.978 --> 00:16:55.981
accusing Diego of romanticizing
the Indian.

00:16:56.315 --> 00:16:59.251
The countryside is in thrall
to Catholicism.

00:16:59.251 --> 00:17:02.821
Javier cries.
It is the bastion of reaction.

00:17:03.889 --> 00:17:06.892
You are denying your own blood, says
Diego.

00:17:06.992 --> 00:17:11.864
The future of Mexico lies with those
whose faces are as brown as the earth,

00:17:12.231 --> 00:17:15.334
and whose souls are as pagan
as quietly Kwei.

00:17:16.835 --> 00:17:20.072
We are all Indian,
whether we admit it or not.

00:17:21.306 --> 00:17:24.209
When we were leaving, Diego handed me two

00:17:24.209 --> 00:17:27.212
exquisitely painted gourds
as a peace offering.

00:17:28.680 --> 00:17:30.349
Javier offered me his warm

00:17:30.349 --> 00:17:33.352
and inviting hand.

00:17:35.054 --> 00:17:36.488
November 1st

00:17:36.488 --> 00:17:39.291
completed four of Edward's negatives.

00:17:39.291 --> 00:17:43.028
The best results so far have been through
fine grained development.

00:17:43.395 --> 00:17:48.567
Using Amadal with excess sodium sulfate,
the details of the lights

00:17:48.567 --> 00:17:51.870
are just hinted at
and the darks are still differentiated.

00:17:52.671 --> 00:17:54.006
We'll be up all night.

00:17:54.006 --> 00:17:57.009
A dozen studio portraits
to print by Monday.

00:18:02.481 --> 00:18:04.416
My days pass monotonously,

00:18:04.416 --> 00:18:08.120
trying to make an ancient American woman
look like a Spanish senorita.

00:18:08.954 --> 00:18:11.957
My eyes suffer and my body is cramped.

00:18:12.091 --> 00:18:14.093
I can't go on this way.

00:18:14.093 --> 00:18:18.530
I compromise anyway and give far too much
of myself to an unappreciative audience.

00:18:19.531 --> 00:18:22.000
If it wasn't
for the fact we have only eight centavos

00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:25.003
to our name and two months
owing to the dueña.

00:18:34.713 --> 00:18:37.983
With the advertisement in the newspaper
100 centavos

00:18:38.450 --> 00:18:41.920
rent 800, paper, developer

00:18:42.421 --> 00:18:44.990
and mixer another 400.

00:18:45.390 --> 00:18:48.293
We have eight sittings this month.

00:18:48.293 --> 00:18:51.230
Yesterday,
our 3:00 sitting discovered that

00:18:51.230 --> 00:18:54.867
Señor Weston and Senorita
Tina are not married

00:18:54.933 --> 00:18:58.537
and canceled the sitting.
Outrageous moralism.

00:18:58.770 --> 00:19:01.740
But we can hardly afford it.

00:19:07.279 --> 00:19:09.014
What are the roots that clutch?

00:19:09.548 --> 00:19:12.551
What branches grow out of this
stony rubbish?

00:19:13.352 --> 00:19:14.353
Son of man.

00:19:14.353 --> 00:19:19.658
You cannot say or guess, for
you know only a heap of broken images.

00:19:20.125 --> 00:19:23.595
Where the sun beats
and the dead tree gives no shelter.

00:19:24.163 --> 00:19:26.532
The cricket no relief.

00:19:26.532 --> 00:19:27.466
The dry stone.

00:19:27.466 --> 00:19:29.301
No sound of water.

00:19:29.301 --> 00:19:32.371
Only there is shadow under this red rock.

00:19:33.138 --> 00:19:35.574
Come in under the shadow of this red rock.

00:19:38.343 --> 00:19:40.312
Edward and I had long planned

00:19:40.312 --> 00:19:42.281
a series with me
reciting poetry,

00:19:42.748 --> 00:19:45.751
a treasured pastime for both of us.

00:19:47.586 --> 00:19:48.987
We go through 20,

00:19:48.987 --> 00:19:51.990
30, 40 Graflex negatives.

00:19:52.157 --> 00:19:56.161
It's as if he will never stop,
as if there is always something.

00:19:56.628 --> 00:19:59.631
A caprice of face and light
that eludes him.

00:20:06.872 --> 00:20:07.839
And I will show you

00:20:07.839 --> 00:20:10.876
something different
from either your shadow at

00:20:10.876 --> 00:20:14.079
morning striding behind you,
or your shadow

00:20:14.079 --> 00:20:17.082
at evening rising to meet you.

00:20:17.249 --> 00:20:20.419
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

00:20:24.756 --> 00:20:27.392
When you start looking
closely at the world.

00:20:27.392 --> 00:20:30.629
Everything around
you seems alive and dense with meaning.

00:20:32.130 --> 00:20:33.699
Observe.

00:20:33.699 --> 00:20:37.536
There are intricate dreams
and philosophies and a spike of cactus.

00:20:38.103 --> 00:20:41.506
Delirious passions
in the petals of a lowly flower.

00:20:53.685 --> 00:20:54.753
I borrow Edward's

00:20:54.753 --> 00:20:57.789
camera while he's supervising the
final bath in the darkroom.

00:21:00.859 --> 00:21:01.660
I put the plate

00:21:01.660 --> 00:21:04.663
in and look down through the ground glass.

00:21:04.863 --> 00:21:07.866
A strange upside down
world comes into focus.

00:21:08.634 --> 00:21:11.637
I press the shutter and count.

00:21:28.086 --> 00:21:30.322
Developing these in the
darkroom later,

00:21:30.555 --> 00:21:33.158
I suddenly realize that the bellows
cut off the left

00:21:33.158 --> 00:21:36.161
corner of every image,
each completely ruined.

00:21:36.928 --> 00:21:39.998
I am so easily distracted
when working out of doors

00:21:40.332 --> 00:21:43.335
and frustrated by my failure.

00:21:56.448 --> 00:21:59.051
They say that the art in photography

00:21:59.051 --> 00:22:02.788
is to take something mundane and ordinary,
and to see it

00:22:02.788 --> 00:22:05.791
as if for the first time.

00:22:08.126 --> 00:22:11.129
Like a door, you can use a door every day.

00:22:11.263 --> 00:22:12.898
And it's just a door.

00:22:12.898 --> 00:22:15.967
A passage to the next room or a barrier.

00:22:15.967 --> 00:22:18.970
One sometimes hesitates to cross.

00:22:19.504 --> 00:22:22.607
Then one day you look
and the sun is streaming

00:22:22.607 --> 00:22:25.977
through the glass,
throwing shadows onto the floor

00:22:26.378 --> 00:22:30.015
and turning the functional
into lines and geometric shapes.

00:22:42.461 --> 00:22:44.429
Edward is showing six photographs

00:22:44.429 --> 00:22:47.999
under the auspices of movimiento
estridentista.

00:22:48.800 --> 00:22:54.005
The estridentistas believe
in a new Mexico of turbines and pistons,

00:22:54.406 --> 00:22:57.409
electric pylons and motorcycles.

00:22:58.009 --> 00:23:00.512
We drink wine and smoke in their cafe

00:23:00.512 --> 00:23:03.515
till the air is so hazy
you can't see the poets.

00:23:05.751 --> 00:23:07.953
Edward was not very impressed.

00:23:07.953 --> 00:23:11.089
He abhors retouching and artistic effects.

00:23:11.656 --> 00:23:14.659
Photography, he says, has its purity.

00:23:16.161 --> 00:23:17.429
But I was fascinated

00:23:17.429 --> 00:23:21.032
by their experiments
and am eager to explore the possibilities

00:23:21.032 --> 00:23:24.236
of double exposure,
using the camera as a mechanical,

00:23:24.236 --> 00:23:26.304
industrial eye.

00:24:07.646 --> 00:24:10.382
At last,
the revolution has caught up with us.

00:24:10.382 --> 00:24:12.751
Wires are cut between here and Veracruz.

00:24:12.751 --> 00:24:13.718
Trains are halted.

00:24:13.718 --> 00:24:16.855
Except those to El Paso,
which are filled with fleeing Americans.

00:24:17.322 --> 00:24:20.525
De la Huerta has 15,000 men
against the government.

00:24:20.659 --> 00:24:22.661
Several states have gone over to them.

00:24:22.661 --> 00:24:26.031
Artillery is being rushed
to defend the President of Chapultepec.

00:24:26.731 --> 00:24:28.767
Food prices are soaring.

00:24:28.767 --> 00:24:32.003
Something must happen
soon or we will be stranded.

00:24:36.007 --> 00:24:37.075
February 3rd,

00:24:37.242 --> 00:24:39.811
a dear friend, a general
in the Federal Army,

00:24:39.811 --> 00:24:42.814
commandeers a car
and we ask to be taken on his rounds.

00:24:43.682 --> 00:24:46.651
I want to see for myself
what is happening in the countryside.

00:24:59.498 --> 00:25:00.932
Arriving at a village,

00:25:00.932 --> 00:25:03.935
we found it barricaded, awaiting a raid.

00:25:04.202 --> 00:25:08.940
Two days before, De la Huerta had attacked
and taken away some 30 horses.

00:25:09.441 --> 00:25:12.444
Now, on the roof, behind sandbags,

00:25:12.677 --> 00:25:15.380
soldiers leaned on their rifles.

00:25:15.881 --> 00:25:18.884
We wished them courage and left quickly.

00:25:20.685 --> 00:25:22.687
We only stopped to set up our cameras

00:25:22.687 --> 00:25:24.356
by the side of the road.

00:25:27.859 --> 00:25:30.862
I managed
a quick composition of the nopal.

00:25:31.129 --> 00:25:34.132
I believe
I am starting to see in monochrome

00:25:34.332 --> 00:25:37.335
and not be blinded by the colors
which surround us.

00:25:50.649 --> 00:25:53.418
Me querido Edwardito.

00:25:53.418 --> 00:25:56.388
It is the greatest of all gifts
he could have given me.

00:25:56.655 --> 00:25:59.991
My very own 4x5 Korona.

00:26:00.325 --> 00:26:02.360
I love the feel and the weight of it.

00:26:06.331 --> 00:26:08.767
April 3rd, 1924.

00:26:08.767 --> 00:26:12.237
Today I set up my precious Korona
on the Azotea

00:26:12.304 --> 00:26:15.006
focused the lens
and pressed the shutter.

00:26:23.014 --> 00:26:25.417
It was a picture of myself.

00:26:48.607 --> 00:26:51.509
Edward and the others
move off into the desert.

00:26:51.509 --> 00:26:55.480
But I prefer to stay inside
the walls of the convent where it's cool.

00:26:56.081 --> 00:26:59.084
A still world of lightness and dark.

00:27:13.465 --> 00:27:16.468
How fast the light is here
in the Mexican desert.

00:27:16.568 --> 00:27:19.771
Most of my open landscapes
were on the verge of over timing.

00:27:19.871 --> 00:27:22.607
Sharper and sharper.
I stopped down my lens.

00:27:22.607 --> 00:27:25.443
The limit of my diaphragm
F32 was not enough,

00:27:25.443 --> 00:27:28.446
so I cut a smaller hole from black paper.

00:27:28.580 --> 00:27:29.481
How ridiculous.

00:27:29.481 --> 00:27:32.484
A soft focus lens
in this country of brilliant light,

00:27:32.651 --> 00:27:35.654
of clean cut lines and outlines,

00:27:48.099 --> 00:27:50.101
I wander the corridors.

00:27:50.101 --> 00:27:51.136
I wait for the light.

00:27:53.838 --> 00:27:56.841
I pause and imagine an image.

00:28:12.057 --> 00:28:14.292
I saw a shadow fall on the ground.

00:28:14.292 --> 00:28:18.263
And I thought all the fragility of life
could be contained in that line.

00:28:18.263 --> 00:28:21.266
Between darkness and light.

00:28:30.341 --> 00:28:33.344
Tina printed her
most interesting abstraction.

00:28:33.344 --> 00:28:35.313
She printed from an enlarged positive.

00:28:35.313 --> 00:28:38.316
So she has a negative print
and shows it upside down.

00:28:38.416 --> 00:28:42.153
All of which sounds fakey and may not be
the best use of photography,

00:28:42.787 --> 00:28:47.025
but it really is very genuine
and one feels no striving, no sweat.

00:28:47.125 --> 00:28:50.128
As in the Man Ray experiments.

00:29:35.173 --> 00:29:36.808
We celebrated our first year

00:29:36.808 --> 00:29:40.445
in Mexico with me
holding a dusty bunch of roses.

00:29:40.445 --> 00:29:43.948
While husband Edward endeavored
to keep a straight face.

00:29:44.983 --> 00:29:47.552
Incredible
to think it's been a year already.

00:29:47.552 --> 00:29:49.888
And how I've come to adore this city.

00:29:49.888 --> 00:29:52.891
With its Aztec ruins and sinking
buildings,

00:29:53.057 --> 00:29:56.761
its passionate politics
and indescribable light,

00:29:57.262 --> 00:30:00.331
all now as familiar
as the haunts of my childhood.

00:30:08.706 --> 00:30:11.009
The news from Italy is not good.

00:30:11.009 --> 00:30:14.012
Mamma is terrified
for the family back in Udine,

00:30:14.379 --> 00:30:17.482
all known to the Blackshirts
as anarchists and reds.

00:30:20.318 --> 00:30:22.921
There are few of us Italian exiles here

00:30:22.921 --> 00:30:26.124
who are organizing an anti-fascist
rally on Saturday.

00:30:26.691 --> 00:30:29.694
Viva la solidaridad internazionali.

00:30:32.664 --> 00:30:37.001
I had such a strong memory
of being on Papa's shoulders, singing the

00:30:37.001 --> 00:30:41.172
internazionali and walking with the crowd
through the streets of Udine.

00:30:41.906 --> 00:30:43.074
It's like love.

00:30:43.074 --> 00:30:46.511
I thought you enter something
bigger than yourself.

00:30:51.482 --> 00:30:53.418
Last night the Anti-Fascist

00:30:53.418 --> 00:30:58.323
League of Mexico was officially struck
and we canvased the room for volunteers.

00:30:59.190 --> 00:31:03.461
Everyone raised their hand
except Edward, who was strangely quiet.

00:31:04.262 --> 00:31:07.799
Am now occupied every evening
with a campaign to raise funds

00:31:07.799 --> 00:31:10.802
for political prisoners in Italy.

00:31:15.039 --> 00:31:17.909
October 1924.

00:31:17.909 --> 00:31:19.711
Clouds have been tempting me again

00:31:20.678 --> 00:31:23.114
next to
the recording of a fugitive expression.

00:31:23.114 --> 00:31:26.184
Is there anything more elusive
to capture than cloud forms?

00:31:27.886 --> 00:31:31.122
The trouble
is this the slight tone of the stock

00:31:31.122 --> 00:31:35.360
is just enough to destroy
the more subtle gradations. Now admitted,

00:31:35.560 --> 00:31:37.462
one peculiarity of the summer clouds

00:31:37.462 --> 00:31:40.465
here is the way
in which they're cut out against the sky.

00:31:40.832 --> 00:31:43.935
Still,
there is an exaggeration in my print

00:31:43.935 --> 00:31:46.938
that is not satisfactory.

00:31:51.743 --> 00:31:52.443
At last

00:31:52.443 --> 00:31:56.047
the glorious rainy season is upon us
breaking the heat.

00:31:56.714 --> 00:31:58.216
What joy!

00:31:58.483 --> 00:32:01.486
Last night, Chandler
and I threw off our clothes

00:32:01.486 --> 00:32:04.489
and danced on the Azotea like banshees.

00:32:05.290 --> 00:32:08.293
Edward could not be persuaded to join us.

00:32:08.927 --> 00:32:12.931
Edward is working and the dark room door
remains a sacrosanct

00:32:12.931 --> 00:32:17.101
barrier through which no one,
not even Chandler or I, may pass.

00:32:18.503 --> 00:32:20.538
I retreat to my bedroom.

00:32:20.538 --> 00:32:22.307
Edward to his.

00:32:22.907 --> 00:32:25.910
Sometimes I feel his distance like a blow.

00:32:42.260 --> 00:32:45.430
He catches me on my way
up to my little room of the Azotea.

00:32:45.964 --> 00:32:47.365
It's 7 a.m.

00:32:47.365 --> 00:32:50.301
and I've just come down for cigarettes
and coffee.

00:32:50.301 --> 00:32:53.938
Pepe, my young, ardent
lover, is waiting for me in bed.

00:32:54.472 --> 00:32:57.809
But Edward claims
the light is perfect, holds me here

00:32:57.809 --> 00:33:00.812
while he moves the tripod one more time.

00:33:10.788 --> 00:33:12.857
I see them staring at her.

00:33:12.857 --> 00:33:16.027
The handshakes, the embraces
that last a beat too long.

00:33:16.961 --> 00:33:17.395
Damn it!

00:33:17.395 --> 00:33:19.664
She can't walk across the room.
Light a cigarette.

00:33:19.664 --> 00:33:23.067
Lean over to serve pasta
and it becomes a sexual display.

00:33:23.868 --> 00:33:26.871
They sniff and she purrs.

00:33:27.171 --> 00:33:30.174
Next time
I'll pick a mistress as ugly as hell.

00:33:36.881 --> 00:33:39.050
Pepe, did I tell you?

00:33:39.350 --> 00:33:42.086
I was 13 when I
worked in the silk factory

00:33:42.086 --> 00:33:44.222
in Trieste in Italy?

00:33:44.589 --> 00:33:48.960
I boiled off the sericin,
melting cocoon glues off threads.

00:33:49.927 --> 00:33:52.497
It made my
fingers red and swollen,

00:33:52.697 --> 00:33:53.698
and I itched.

00:33:54.665 --> 00:33:57.668
The silk was used in rich women's kimonos,

00:33:58.069 --> 00:34:01.072
as fine and delicate as a second skin.

00:34:11.816 --> 00:34:13.618
He's watching me today.

00:34:13.618 --> 00:34:14.318
And his look

00:34:14.318 --> 00:34:16.521
wounds like a knife.

00:34:18.122 --> 00:34:20.825
I know he has his own flirtations.

00:34:20.825 --> 00:34:24.562
Even with our maid,
he makes no attempt to hide her adoration.

00:34:26.030 --> 00:34:28.533
I don't understand his coldness.

00:34:28.533 --> 00:34:31.035
He knows he has my heart.

00:34:32.437 --> 00:34:35.440
I wanted to give him something
he's never seen before.

00:34:35.706 --> 00:34:38.042
His face in the morning light.

00:34:38.042 --> 00:34:41.446
The flesh of his back
as he sits in his cold bath.

00:34:42.246 --> 00:34:44.282
But Edward refused.

00:34:44.282 --> 00:34:47.251
He won't let me catch him unawares.

00:34:47.251 --> 00:34:50.822
So I dress him up, pose him
as the great artist.

00:34:51.789 --> 00:34:53.858
“Do I look like Stieglitz?”
He laughs,

00:34:54.358 --> 00:34:56.761
gesturing for me to lower the tripod.

00:34:57.462 --> 00:34:59.897
Yes, master, I joke.

00:35:00.198 --> 00:35:01.699
He gazes into the distance.

00:35:02.733 --> 00:35:05.036
It's the direction he's going.

00:35:05.670 --> 00:35:07.238
Adelante!

00:35:08.506 --> 00:35:10.741
He's left this morning for California.

00:35:11.042 --> 00:35:13.711
I'm to be in charge at the studio.

00:35:23.421 --> 00:35:25.590
Dear Edward,

00:35:25.590 --> 00:35:27.859
you never said when you would be back

00:35:27.859 --> 00:35:30.628
or what this means for us.

00:35:30.628 --> 00:35:32.730
You know my feelings.

00:35:32.730 --> 00:35:35.433
I want to go on with you

00:35:35.433 --> 00:35:36.400
Today,

00:35:36.400 --> 00:35:38.870
the emptiness of the house is terrible.

00:35:38.870 --> 00:35:41.606
Already I've been hurt by it.

00:35:41.606 --> 00:35:44.408
I had the illusion
that you had just gone to town

00:35:44.408 --> 00:35:47.178
and would return in a little while.

00:35:47.178 --> 00:35:51.649
Then the truth flashed through my mind,
and the hard fact of my aloneness

00:35:51.649 --> 00:35:53.317
hit me.

00:36:12.436 --> 00:36:13.371
In a day,

00:36:13.371 --> 00:36:15.740
the flower will turn yellow.

00:36:15.740 --> 00:36:17.441
The stems droop.

00:36:17.441 --> 00:36:19.777
The curl fade.

00:36:19.777 --> 00:36:22.680
I press my shutter against time,

00:36:22.680 --> 00:36:25.516
against decay, against life,

00:36:25.516 --> 00:36:28.519
which changes continually.

00:36:29.620 --> 00:36:32.223
I should want no more than this.

00:36:32.223 --> 00:36:33.691
A moment out of time,

00:36:33.691 --> 00:36:35.493
when form becomes sublime.

00:36:37.161 --> 00:36:38.829
But I'm restless.

00:36:38.829 --> 00:36:40.698
I paced the floor.

00:36:40.698 --> 00:36:42.900
I smoke too much.

00:36:42.900 --> 00:36:45.069
I go to visit Diego.

00:36:48.606 --> 00:36:51.609
He invites me to a screening
at the Russian embassy.

00:36:51.776 --> 00:36:54.545
It's like nothing I have ever seen.

00:36:54.545 --> 00:36:57.548
A film bursting with the intensity of life

00:36:57.648 --> 00:37:01.252
and with characters who have real history
etched on their faces.

00:37:04.322 --> 00:37:06.290
I woke this morning with those images

00:37:06.290 --> 00:37:08.459
still haunting my dreams.

00:37:12.430 --> 00:37:13.130
These days,

00:37:13.130 --> 00:37:16.667
Mexican politics are as Byzantine
as a Russian novel.

00:37:17.401 --> 00:37:21.272
President Calles pours
massive funds into his own labor

00:37:21.272 --> 00:37:24.875
organization,
then forces it to suspend all strikes.

00:37:25.343 --> 00:37:27.345
So much for the class struggle.

00:37:27.345 --> 00:37:30.348
Many of our closest friends
are in the Communist Party,

00:37:30.481 --> 00:37:33.584
and they do seem to be the only ones
organizing any kind of

00:37:33.584 --> 00:37:35.386
serious opposition.

00:37:45.663 --> 00:37:46.897
I walk with Diego,

00:37:46.897 --> 00:37:50.568
Siqueiros and Javier, el sindicato
de artistas.

00:37:51.302 --> 00:37:53.671
Life is short and art is long.

00:37:53.671 --> 00:37:59.310
Edward always said, but here in Mexico
one has only to step into the street

00:37:59.310 --> 00:38:02.313
to be caught
in the moving stream of history.

00:38:02.580 --> 00:38:05.483
I felt the press of life around me.

00:38:05.483 --> 00:38:09.120
For a moment I thought I would be crushed
and threw my arms around the camera,

00:38:10.354 --> 00:38:14.091
Every time I looked up,
the crowd swelled before me.

00:38:14.492 --> 00:38:17.461
Another regiment of colors and banners.

00:38:17.628 --> 00:38:20.364
Javier took the tripod,
and we walked on.

00:38:27.038 --> 00:38:28.506
September 15th.

00:38:28.506 --> 00:38:31.142
Well,
I willed myself back in Mexico again.

00:38:31.142 --> 00:38:32.243
And here I am.

00:38:32.643 --> 00:38:36.714
Tina is more and more occupied these days
with anti-imperialist social work.

00:38:36.947 --> 00:38:39.283
But I'm becoming a reactionary.

00:38:39.283 --> 00:38:41.719
Too much sentimentality
over the proletariat.

00:38:41.719 --> 00:38:44.455
Too much deification of the Indian.

00:38:44.689 --> 00:38:47.224
What incentive is there to excel?

00:38:47.224 --> 00:38:49.560
Injustice is a stronger way.

00:38:49.560 --> 00:38:53.064
The weaklings are weeded, the fit survive.

00:38:57.468 --> 00:39:00.271
I had so long to have Edward back.

00:39:00.271 --> 00:39:04.442
But now that he is finally here,
he seems withdrawn, distant.

00:39:05.676 --> 00:39:08.579
We throw ourselves into our work.

00:39:08.579 --> 00:39:12.216
I've been doing a series lately
on industrial images of Mexico,

00:39:12.616 --> 00:39:16.187
and have been traveling through
all corners of the city and environs.

00:39:17.221 --> 00:39:20.491
Mexico
is a country of such extreme contrasts.

00:39:21.492 --> 00:39:24.729
One day you can see a campesino,
plowing by hand,

00:39:25.229 --> 00:39:28.332
and then arrive at a factory
which springs up out of nowhere.

00:39:29.400 --> 00:39:33.704
I'm trying to capture some of that
modernizing impulse through my angles

00:39:34.004 --> 00:39:37.174
and through the framing of dynamic lines
and outlines.

00:39:45.883 --> 00:39:48.452
I have been photographing our toilet,

00:39:48.452 --> 00:39:52.022
that glossy, enameled receptacle
of extraordinary beauty.

00:39:52.656 --> 00:39:55.893
My excitement was absolute,
aesthetic response to form,

00:39:56.160 --> 00:39:59.163
here was the sensuous
curve of the human form,

00:39:59.163 --> 00:40:02.133
divine, but minus imperfections.

00:40:02.400 --> 00:40:05.436
Never did the Greeks reach
a more significant consummation

00:40:05.436 --> 00:40:08.773
to their culture,
and it somehow reminded me, in the glory

00:40:08.773 --> 00:40:13.411
of its swelling, sweeping forward
movement of the Victory of Samothrace.

00:40:18.983 --> 00:40:22.920
In spite of him,
I smoked the last of Tina’s cigarettes,

00:40:22.920 --> 00:40:24.889
although I'd vowed to quit.

00:40:25.389 --> 00:40:27.391
The streets are full of rumors of a new

00:40:27.391 --> 00:40:30.094
and possibly worse, outbreak of violence.

00:40:30.594 --> 00:40:33.330
If this is so,
I would return to California

00:40:33.330 --> 00:40:34.865
at once.

00:40:36.767 --> 00:40:38.202
It's 6 a.m.,

00:40:38.202 --> 00:40:40.838
and I hear the lock in the door
and Tina coming in

00:40:40.838 --> 00:40:43.841
by the downstairs patio.

00:40:45.643 --> 00:40:47.411
Her life is a mystery to me now.

00:40:59.223 --> 00:41:00.691
She closes her bedroom door

00:41:00.691 --> 00:41:03.661
and I go up to the Azotea alone.

00:41:03.894 --> 00:41:06.897
A mist is lifting off the volcanoes
in the distance.

00:41:07.531 --> 00:41:11.335
The sages predict that Popocatépetl
will erupt in the next week.

00:41:12.203 --> 00:41:15.639
Too bad it cannot be postponed
till the 31st, our New Year's Eve party.

00:41:15.773 --> 00:41:17.441
We might dance to our doom.

00:41:44.802 --> 00:41:46.337
Popo did not erupt.

00:41:46.337 --> 00:41:48.572
And our party was a huge success.

00:41:48.939 --> 00:41:52.776
Everyone feasted on Lupe's
delicious chiles en nogada.

00:41:54.845 --> 00:41:57.648
I smoked Edward's pipe
while he wore garters

00:41:57.648 --> 00:42:00.951
and an old dress of mine
with pink pointed buttons for nipples.

00:42:01.652 --> 00:42:04.722
He flirted shamelessly with Maui and ran

00:42:04.722 --> 00:42:07.725
through the full repertoire
of a female coquette.

00:42:08.225 --> 00:42:11.562
Lupe was enraged
and told him he was sin vergüenza -

00:42:11.829 --> 00:42:13.731
without shame.

00:42:48.933 --> 00:42:51.936
Tonight I called Edward to my room.

00:42:52.369 --> 00:42:55.806
La luz es tan hermosa al final del dia.

00:42:57.207 --> 00:42:59.743
We strew the pillows with flowers.

00:42:59.877 --> 00:43:01.345
Our lips met.

00:43:01.345 --> 00:43:05.916
And for a fleeting moment I felt there was
still a world of possibility between us.

00:43:07.318 --> 00:43:10.888
Suddenly, Edward son barged
in, having locked himself

00:43:10.888 --> 00:43:14.291
out of the apartment,
our romantic mood dissipated

00:43:14.291 --> 00:43:16.293
into thin air.

00:43:17.494 --> 00:43:19.663
Morning came, clear and brilliant.

00:43:20.631 --> 00:43:22.967
I will do some heads of you today, Tina.

00:43:22.967 --> 00:43:25.970
A Mexican sun will reveal everything.

00:43:25.970 --> 00:43:29.139
Nothing can be hidden under this
cloudless, cruel sky.

00:43:29.707 --> 00:43:30.708
Let me see.

00:43:30.708 --> 00:43:33.210
F16 one tenth of a second.

00:43:33.210 --> 00:43:34.678
How calculated it sounds.

00:43:34.678 --> 00:43:37.047
Yet really, how spontaneous and genuine.

00:43:37.047 --> 00:43:40.017
For I have so overcome
the mechanics of my camera that I feel it

00:43:40.017 --> 00:43:43.020
responding intuitively to my desires.

00:43:44.288 --> 00:43:47.291
She leaned against the whitewashed wall.

00:43:47.591 --> 00:43:50.594
I drew close and kissed her.

00:43:51.161 --> 00:43:53.530
A tear rolled down her cheek.

00:43:54.031 --> 00:43:57.034
And then I captured the moment forever.

00:43:57.735 --> 00:43:59.637
I used to think there was no greater

00:43:59.637 --> 00:44:03.073
happiness than to be immortalized
in Edward's photographs.

00:44:03.974 --> 00:44:08.312
But it was love that exposed
those intimate, delicate images.

00:44:09.013 --> 00:44:14.318
And the world looked at those images and
saw a woman who lived for passion and art.

00:44:15.586 --> 00:44:17.855
Now I'm not so certain.

00:44:18.322 --> 00:44:21.325
He makes me feel alone
on this side of the camera.

00:45:00.464 --> 00:45:02.833
February 1st, 1926.

00:45:02.833 --> 00:45:06.103
Today, the radical central union, the CGT,

00:45:06.370 --> 00:45:10.741
marched against President Calles
and his reactionary version of unionism.

00:45:11.442 --> 00:45:15.546
More and more people are joining
the opposition to graft and corruption.

00:45:16.380 --> 00:45:18.882
These days,
you mark your politics with your body

00:45:18.882 --> 00:45:21.218
in the street.

00:45:25.122 --> 00:45:26.423
For 25 pesos

00:45:26.457 --> 00:45:29.460
I purchased a rapid lens
and a cheaply made shutter.

00:45:30.094 --> 00:45:33.063
I heave the Graflex
and tripod up to the Azotea,

00:45:33.063 --> 00:45:36.967
ready to face
life afresh, free from fog and flare.

00:45:38.268 --> 00:45:40.504
She is there.

00:45:49.146 --> 00:45:50.948
He hasn't touched me for months,

00:45:50.948 --> 00:45:53.517
but he will watch me through the camera.

00:45:56.887 --> 00:45:58.322
He doesn't want my face.

00:45:58.322 --> 00:46:00.624
Gestures for me to turn and arch my back.

00:46:02.392 --> 00:46:04.661
Freeze, he says.

00:46:04.661 --> 00:46:10.667
The stones are cutting into my knees,
but I hold for 20, 30, 40 seconds.

00:46:14.438 --> 00:46:17.040
I've wanted to give him so much.

00:46:17.474 --> 00:46:19.176
Is this all we share?

00:46:19.176 --> 00:46:21.712
A thin skin of emulsion as ephemeral

00:46:21.712 --> 00:46:23.547
as light?

00:46:32.456 --> 00:46:34.458
I was shaving when Anita Brenner came.

00:46:34.458 --> 00:46:37.461
Hardly expecting her on such a gloomy,
drizzly day.

00:46:37.561 --> 00:46:42.199
I told her she would shiver in
the unheated room, but she took no hints.

00:46:43.100 --> 00:46:45.869
The session lasted nearly a day,
and I convinced Weston

00:46:45.869 --> 00:46:49.473
to do the photo illustrations for my book,
though I gather Tina will be assisting.

00:46:50.073 --> 00:46:52.843
I can't easily put Tina down as a friend,
but do look on her

00:46:52.843 --> 00:46:55.913
numerous and easy liaisons
with grudging envy.

00:46:56.747 --> 00:46:59.449
Tina deems
my work perfect publicity and paints me

00:46:59.449 --> 00:47:02.452
a vulgar, scheming, adventurous
who knows nothing of painting.

00:47:02.853 --> 00:47:06.023
More and more, she is turning into a grind
on Diego's little megaphone.

00:47:06.356 --> 00:47:07.958
Feel important having an enemy.

00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:19.736
Puebla, Oaxaca, Guanajuato.

00:47:20.204 --> 00:47:21.438
We're off for four months,

00:47:21.438 --> 00:47:25.142
taking photographs for Anita's
book on Mexican art and artifacts.

00:47:25.576 --> 00:47:29.012
We sleep in rickety beds
with bugs, a corner of our cells

00:47:29.012 --> 00:47:30.681
serving as our darkroom.

00:47:30.681 --> 00:47:34.418
We strap the camera to the backs of mules,
setting up the Graflex

00:47:34.418 --> 00:47:37.421
in ancient sites in forlorn villages.

00:47:38.689 --> 00:47:42.459
I have never been this far
into the interior, past the slopes of

00:47:42.459 --> 00:47:43.927
the Sierra madre.

00:47:43.927 --> 00:47:46.830
We meet daily
with the incontrovertible truth

00:47:46.830 --> 00:47:50.067
that the deepest
and richest part of Mexico is Indian.

00:47:52.536 --> 00:47:55.239
Edward gets flustered
when people crowd his frame,

00:47:55.239 --> 00:47:58.442
fumbles over the language,
turns his camera the other way.

00:47:58.742 --> 00:48:02.312
But I love the street
with its vibrant rush of music

00:48:02.312 --> 00:48:04.448
and everyday life.

00:48:16.293 --> 00:48:19.263
The countryside is like a great dark
tidal wave.

00:48:19.463 --> 00:48:23.634
President Calles has closed all Catholic
schools and deported hundreds of priests.

00:48:24.167 --> 00:48:27.170
The forces of reaction are armed
and massing.

00:48:27.471 --> 00:48:31.141
Ironic that so many are desperately
poor campesinos prepared

00:48:31.141 --> 00:48:35.178
to die in defense of a church that wields
such tyrannical power over them.

00:48:36.213 --> 00:48:38.115
Guadalajara was not gay,

00:48:38.348 --> 00:48:40.284
what city could be during this
crisis?

00:48:40.918 --> 00:48:43.453
Street fighting between
soldiers and Catholics?

00:48:43.453 --> 00:48:48.292
The majority women armed with bricks,
clubs, machetes ended in bloodshed

00:48:48.292 --> 00:48:49.960
and death.

00:48:51.194 --> 00:48:54.364
The sacristy was closed, locked
and sealed by the government.

00:48:54.932 --> 00:48:57.868
If we enter the church,
some fanatical old hag would follow

00:48:57.868 --> 00:48:59.503
or a crowd of sullen faces

00:48:59.503 --> 00:49:01.838
would eye our activities.

00:49:13.717 --> 00:49:15.018
In Uruapan,

00:49:15.018 --> 00:49:16.620
we'd stop for café con leche.

00:49:16.620 --> 00:49:19.022
And there were the newspaper headlines.

00:49:19.022 --> 00:49:22.292
Two Mexican engineers
suspected of being government

00:49:22.292 --> 00:49:25.295
informers were lynched in Acámbaro.

00:49:25.395 --> 00:49:28.398
Edward is afraid
the same fate may befall us.

00:49:30.534 --> 00:49:33.603
Torrents of rain had fallen for days
before our departure,

00:49:33.603 --> 00:49:36.106
flooding the country,
washing out tracks,

00:49:36.540 --> 00:49:39.076
delaying our departure.

00:49:41.445 --> 00:49:43.680
Mexico breaks one's heart.

00:49:43.680 --> 00:49:46.350
Mixed with love was a growing bitterness.

00:49:46.350 --> 00:49:48.452
The hatred I tried hard to resist.

00:49:51.388 --> 00:49:52.289
Travel weary.

00:49:52.289 --> 00:49:54.524
We are finally back in Mexico City.

00:49:54.524 --> 00:49:56.860
And working furiously in the dark room.

00:49:57.127 --> 00:50:00.130
This trip has worn out
something between us.

00:50:13.443 --> 00:50:14.044
Have delivered

00:50:14.044 --> 00:50:17.881
450 prints from the negatives
done on the last leg of our journey.

00:50:18.448 --> 00:50:22.052
Adding those from Puebla
and Oaxaca have yet to finish another 200.

00:50:23.120 --> 00:50:25.355
I'm now anxious to leave.

00:50:27.624 --> 00:50:28.658
November 2nd.

00:50:28.658 --> 00:50:30.227
Day of the dead.

00:50:30.227 --> 00:50:33.230
Finished
printing Edward series from Pátzcuaro.

00:50:33.897 --> 00:50:37.467
I've always loved that quality
of haunting emptiness in Edward's work,

00:50:38.001 --> 00:50:40.704
but here it feels eerie and cold,

00:50:40.937 --> 00:50:43.940
as if he's already left Mexico.

00:50:46.043 --> 00:50:47.210
In Mexico,

00:50:47.210 --> 00:50:50.680
death is something you melt in your mouth
in sugary confections

00:50:50.680 --> 00:50:53.083
of skulls and coffins.

00:50:53.784 --> 00:50:57.654
I walk the Azotea alone,
conjuring my own ghosts.

00:50:58.221 --> 00:51:01.224
You know all that died between us.

00:51:01.491 --> 00:51:02.692
I've made my decision.

00:51:03.860 --> 00:51:06.363
America means nothing to me now.

00:51:06.897 --> 00:51:09.900
It was a place
where I always felt a foreigner.

00:51:10.500 --> 00:51:13.470
But Mexico feels like home.

00:51:20.410 --> 00:51:21.812
This time Mexico.

00:51:21.812 --> 00:51:24.281
It must be adios forever.

00:51:24.281 --> 00:51:26.249
And you, Tina?

00:51:26.249 --> 00:51:29.252
I feel it must be farewell forever too.

00:51:40.530 --> 00:51:41.698
This time his going

00:51:41.698 --> 00:51:44.701
was not heartbreaking, but bittersweet.

00:51:45.168 --> 00:51:47.771
What thou lovest well remains.

00:51:47.771 --> 00:51:50.774
The rest is dross.

00:52:06.556 --> 00:52:08.225
Maria Orozco comes over.

00:52:08.925 --> 00:52:13.797
She brings a gallon of wine and gramophone
recordings of the latest canciones.

00:52:14.631 --> 00:52:18.235
We are soon gloriously borrachitas.

00:52:21.271 --> 00:52:23.573
I take her in my arms.

00:52:23.573 --> 00:52:26.643
And we dance and dance
until the sun comes up over

00:52:26.643 --> 00:52:28.678
Popocatépetl.

00:52:29.713 --> 00:52:31.848
Maria is beautiful.

00:52:31.848 --> 00:52:34.317
With strong dramatic features.

00:52:34.317 --> 00:52:38.321
And a mouth as wide and
generous as a ripe aguacate.

00:53:09.586 --> 00:53:12.422
Yesterday in the studio all day.

00:53:12.422 --> 00:53:16.359
Amazing how the potassium bichromate
brings out the whiteness of the eyes.

00:53:17.294 --> 00:53:20.697
These days, I've only had the time
for commercial photography,

00:53:21.064 --> 00:53:25.068
as it is suddenly a la mode
to have one's portrait done by the great

00:53:25.068 --> 00:53:28.505
Tina Modotti, who still struggles monthly
for the rent.

00:53:29.839 --> 00:53:31.474
Two more sittings tomorrow.

00:53:31.474 --> 00:53:34.477
One with the young actress
Dolores del Rio.

00:53:51.962 --> 00:53:54.564
I've not been very creative lately.

00:53:54.564 --> 00:53:55.432
I am convinced

00:53:55.432 --> 00:53:59.936
that as far as creation is concerned,
women lack the power of concentration

00:54:00.237 --> 00:54:03.607
and the facility
to be wholly absorbed by one thing.

00:54:04.708 --> 00:54:06.876
Am I being too rash?

00:54:06.876 --> 00:54:09.045
Perhaps posing for Diego has given me

00:54:09.045 --> 00:54:11.381
too much time to reflect.

00:54:12.349 --> 00:54:14.985
But I cannot, as one might propose,

00:54:14.985 --> 00:54:19.522
solve the problem of life
by losing myself in the problem of art.

00:54:20.490 --> 00:54:22.892
I put too much art into life.

00:54:23.159 --> 00:54:25.161
I can't detach myself.

00:54:25.328 --> 00:54:30.033
No doubt all that energy would be better
spent if I could devote it to my work.

00:54:30.900 --> 00:54:33.903
But life always draws me away.

00:54:40.744 --> 00:54:42.379
Diego’s assistant Javier

00:54:42.379 --> 00:54:45.882
is always watching in the
background, grinding the pigment.

00:54:46.383 --> 00:54:49.352
Slaking the lime, melting the resin.

00:54:50.053 --> 00:54:51.321
He understands.

00:54:51.521 --> 00:54:54.491
My father, the house painter, used
to put up a coat of mortar,

00:54:54.691 --> 00:54:55.792
then a coat of plaster

00:54:55.792 --> 00:54:59.562
mixed with marble dust, and then iron
the surface as smooth as glass.

00:55:00.430 --> 00:55:03.433
I started from there,
changing the plaster to lime.

00:55:03.967 --> 00:55:06.569
I made drips with [?]
to compare my results

00:55:06.569 --> 00:55:09.773
with pre-Hispanic murals
and showed the samples to Diego.

00:55:10.740 --> 00:55:12.942
He said, this is it.

00:55:12.942 --> 00:55:16.913
You are the living soul
and scientist of the muralist revolution.

00:55:19.082 --> 00:55:21.451
Javier disapproves of Diego.

00:55:21.451 --> 00:55:25.655
He's too promiscuous, too full of appetite
and ego for the party.

00:55:26.656 --> 00:55:30.260
Only last week,
Diego chipped out two of Javier's murals

00:55:30.260 --> 00:55:33.763
at the Secretaría de Educación
to make room for his own.

00:55:37.200 --> 00:55:37.701
Tina.

00:55:37.701 --> 00:55:41.371
Did you know that over a million
people died for the revolution in Mexico?

00:55:41.871 --> 00:55:43.573
Only half by the bullet,

00:55:43.573 --> 00:55:47.043
the rest by typhus, starvation,
and the greed of the generals.

00:55:47.777 --> 00:55:49.946
Every political jefe
since will tell you

00:55:50.313 --> 00:55:51.715
the revolution is over.

00:55:51.715 --> 00:55:52.515
We have won.

00:55:52.515 --> 00:55:55.452
Put down your arms.
We will look after you.

00:55:55.452 --> 00:55:59.556
But in México,
the revolution is only a beautiful dream.

00:56:00.357 --> 00:56:03.159
Go into the countryside, the barrios.

00:56:03.159 --> 00:56:04.361
The land is dry.

00:56:04.361 --> 00:56:05.528
Our children are dying.

00:56:05.528 --> 00:56:08.531
And we are all ghosts and phantoms.

00:56:08.965 --> 00:56:12.102
The revolution
is our future, not our past.

00:56:22.112 --> 00:56:24.647
February 1st, 1927.

00:56:24.647 --> 00:56:25.982
Colonia Bolsa two.

00:56:25.982 --> 00:56:28.952
In the afternoon.

00:56:29.185 --> 00:56:32.155
There are a dozen children
following Javier and I,

00:56:32.155 --> 00:56:35.158
barefoot and hungry, begging for centavos.

00:56:36.326 --> 00:56:38.094
I empty my pockets.

00:56:38.328 --> 00:56:39.996
I'm dusty and hot.

00:56:39.996 --> 00:56:42.999
And my tears won't stop flowing.

00:56:54.744 --> 00:56:57.580
This is a new challenge for photography.

00:56:57.580 --> 00:57:02.419
How to see a face not just in relation
to the inner world of the individual,

00:57:02.886 --> 00:57:05.889
but as a map for a history
of exploitation.

00:57:06.356 --> 00:57:07.891
It's all there.

00:57:07.891 --> 00:57:09.692
The promises broken.

00:57:09.692 --> 00:57:12.662
The 400 years of servitude.

00:57:18.401 --> 00:57:21.404
Have talked with Diego
and Javier all day.

00:57:21.471 --> 00:57:25.241
I want it to be clear to all that
my joining the party is not the result

00:57:25.241 --> 00:57:28.578
of my loving a revolutionary,
something external,

00:57:29.012 --> 00:57:32.115
but is the result
of a very deep commitment inside myself.

00:57:33.817 --> 00:57:36.419
I asked if I could join the brigades
organizing

00:57:36.419 --> 00:57:39.055
in Colonia Bolsa, but they said no.

00:57:39.055 --> 00:57:40.457
It was no place for a woman.

00:57:44.461 --> 00:57:46.229
Tina speaks at the anti-fascist

00:57:46.229 --> 00:57:49.232
rally before thousands and we are riveted.

00:57:50.066 --> 00:57:51.901
She is not like Mexican women

00:57:51.901 --> 00:57:54.904
oppressed by the church,
bound by convention.

00:57:55.472 --> 00:57:57.774
I am an enemy of tyranny, Tina cries,

00:57:57.774 --> 00:58:00.877
and we rise to our feet,
our fists in the air.

00:58:02.011 --> 00:58:04.714
She is fearless and magnetic.

00:58:04.948 --> 00:58:07.951
I watch and already she is changing.

00:58:08.351 --> 00:58:11.521
Her hair pulled back, her clothes modest,

00:58:12.589 --> 00:58:15.592
her eyes flashing with passion.

00:58:26.870 --> 00:58:30.840
We repudiate so-called easel painting
and every kind of art

00:58:31.274 --> 00:58:36.045
favored by ultra intellectual circles
because it is aristocratic.

00:58:36.713 --> 00:58:40.950
And we praise monumental
art in all its forms,

00:58:41.251 --> 00:58:44.120
because it is public property.

00:58:44.120 --> 00:58:48.291
Art must no longer be the expression
of individual satisfaction,

00:58:48.791 --> 00:58:51.294
but should be a fighting, educative

00:58:51.294 --> 00:58:53.496
art for all.

00:58:59.602 --> 00:59:02.138
I like to think of these
as poems to the revolution.

00:59:03.940 --> 00:59:06.943
Maybe these
are too obvious, as Anita Brenner says,

00:59:06.976 --> 00:59:10.313
to bound to sloganeering
and the rhetoric of simple truths.

00:59:10.914 --> 00:59:13.016
But what can a photographer do?

00:59:13.283 --> 00:59:15.752
Javier and Diego have their walls,

00:59:15.752 --> 00:59:18.721
but I have only a small rectangular frame.

00:59:19.122 --> 00:59:21.391
I took hours in the studio with these,

00:59:21.391 --> 00:59:25.161
arranging a light so precisely
there is just a hint of a shadow,

00:59:25.161 --> 00:59:29.632
which lends the objects
a very powerful symbolic feeling.

00:59:35.271 --> 00:59:37.540
May Day, 1927.

00:59:37.540 --> 00:59:40.343
The Zocalo fills with thousands of us.

00:59:40.343 --> 00:59:45.181
We march, thinking of our comrades
in Italy, in Germany, in Spain.

00:59:45.915 --> 00:59:48.184
Fascism may rear its ugly head.

00:59:48.184 --> 00:59:50.520
But we are on the side of history.

00:59:51.220 --> 00:59:53.890
Let the future see these images and know

00:59:53.890 --> 00:59:57.360
that we believe passionately
and ardently in our goals.

00:59:58.194 --> 00:59:59.996
The camera will never lie.

01:00:00.597 --> 01:00:01.798
Neither will it forget.

01:00:06.903 --> 01:00:10.506
Francis Toor and I are off for a week
to Tehuantepec

01:00:10.506 --> 01:00:13.610
shooting photos for her journal,
Mexican Folkways.

01:00:14.510 --> 01:00:19.082
I close my eyes and move backwards
into time before Cortez.

01:00:19.716 --> 01:00:22.919
Back to the heart of Diego’s
mythic Mexico,

01:00:23.486 --> 01:00:26.489
the land of Zapotec, Mixteca,

01:00:26.856 --> 01:00:28.791
Chichimecas.

01:00:37.066 --> 01:00:41.004
Francis and I change into khaki pants
and shirts for our fieldwork,

01:00:41.371 --> 01:00:45.541
and joke at how invigorating it would be
to defect to the matriarchy here

01:00:45.541 --> 01:00:47.143
in Tehuantepec.

01:00:47.377 --> 01:00:50.713
God knows I need to simplify my life
with men.

01:00:53.750 --> 01:00:56.119
Here are the famous women of Tehuantepec.

01:00:56.419 --> 01:01:00.123
Beautiful and strong,
as graceful as dancers.

01:01:03.960 --> 01:01:07.196
I've never seen women as proud
and sure of their movements,

01:01:07.730 --> 01:01:10.733
as frank and tender in their look.

01:01:14.704 --> 01:01:15.938
I've been thinking lately

01:01:15.938 --> 01:01:18.474
that my ideal is a perfect snapshot,

01:01:18.608 --> 01:01:21.711
the moving quality of life
rather than still studies.

01:01:22.111 --> 01:01:23.980
But nothing could be more difficult

01:01:24.147 --> 01:01:27.216
each time I have to rush
to find my frame and exposure.

01:01:27.650 --> 01:01:29.252
No time to do a calculation.

01:01:29.252 --> 01:01:31.621
I'll just average at F11.

01:01:31.921 --> 01:01:34.557
Suddenly they spot me, a strange creature

01:01:34.557 --> 01:01:38.227
under a dark cloth
and they speed by like birds in flight.

01:01:40.596 --> 01:01:41.364
Only with much

01:01:41.364 --> 01:01:44.367
friendly persuasion will they pause.

01:01:44.667 --> 01:01:46.869
I promise them prints.

01:01:47.403 --> 01:01:50.406
They promise to make me into a real woman.

01:01:50.973 --> 01:01:53.876
I join the long line of my sisters here

01:01:53.876 --> 01:01:57.480
with indigo cotton against my breasts,
and the delicious

01:01:57.480 --> 01:02:00.483
brush of a full skirt against my legs.

01:02:02.285 --> 01:02:03.953
Here I am in long shot,

01:02:03.953 --> 01:02:06.689
holding the cable release behind my back.

01:02:12.228 --> 01:02:14.964
Back in the city,
in a flurry of meetings and party

01:02:14.964 --> 01:02:18.868
activities with a host of new photo
assignments for El Machete,

01:02:19.368 --> 01:02:22.739
Am now absolutely
determined to work in a different way

01:02:22.739 --> 01:02:24.741
and have resolved to sell the Korona.

01:02:25.541 --> 01:02:28.778
It breaks my heart to part with it,
but I need the money to buy

01:02:28.778 --> 01:02:30.813
a Graflex.

01:02:32.982 --> 01:02:35.084
I've always been too
restrained in my work.

01:02:35.084 --> 01:02:38.087
With a 3x4 reflex,
I'll be able to loosen up.

01:02:38.488 --> 01:02:42.558
It's a lighter camera and much more useful
for work in the field.

01:02:46.362 --> 01:02:49.732
Javier and I to party Congress in Jalapa,
Chihuahua,

01:02:49.799 --> 01:02:51.801
to meet with radical rural groups.

01:02:53.703 --> 01:02:55.938
The campesinos have organized literacy

01:02:55.938 --> 01:02:58.941
brigades and cadres here
since the revolution.

01:02:59.041 --> 01:03:01.577
Six years ago,
they took over a hacienda to run

01:03:01.577 --> 01:03:04.580
it as a cooperative.

01:03:07.183 --> 01:03:10.153
I framed them from a low angle
against the sky.

01:03:10.153 --> 01:03:11.888
Heroic and proud.

01:03:12.088 --> 01:03:14.490
They are more curious than shy.

01:03:14.490 --> 01:03:18.027
A lady photographer wearing pants,
smoking like a fiend.

01:03:19.162 --> 01:03:22.165
I crouch in the shadows
while they arrange their serapes

01:03:22.532 --> 01:03:25.001
and look directly into the camera.

01:03:30.173 --> 01:03:31.908
I move tighter on the boy,

01:03:31.908 --> 01:03:35.578
using the band of the sombrero
as a strong formal accent.

01:03:36.412 --> 01:03:39.182
At the end of the day,
they are my brothers.

01:03:39.182 --> 01:03:42.185
We clasp hands and toast Zapata.

01:03:44.887 --> 01:03:45.755
On our return.

01:03:45.755 --> 01:03:48.991
The Central Committee informed us
that Javier will be sent to Moscow

01:03:48.991 --> 01:03:51.961
for three years for cadre
training at the Lenin School.

01:03:52.562 --> 01:03:54.697
I will miss him
terribly, but will say nothing.

01:04:01.204 --> 01:04:03.472
I fill my loneliness with work.

01:04:03.673 --> 01:04:05.842
There is always work.

01:04:05.975 --> 01:04:08.978
Finishing article and photo
layout for El Machete.

01:04:09.378 --> 01:04:11.047
I take a photograph.

01:04:11.180 --> 01:04:12.315
A man.

01:04:12.315 --> 01:04:13.850
His clothes ragged,

01:04:13.850 --> 01:04:17.286
sits on the edge of a city street
and buries his face in his hands.

01:04:18.454 --> 01:04:20.923
I take another of a billboard
for elegant men's

01:04:20.923 --> 01:04:23.926
clothing
and print them together as a collage.

01:04:24.160 --> 01:04:27.163
Rich and Poor Indian and Blanco.

01:04:27.363 --> 01:04:30.333
The intransigent
divide of classes in Mexico.

01:04:30.933 --> 01:04:35.338
The contrast is obvious, of course,
but it is effective propaganda,

01:04:35.338 --> 01:04:38.474
and I do believe photography
has the most radical potential,

01:04:39.108 --> 01:04:42.144
precisely because it can only be produced
in the present,

01:04:42.745 --> 01:04:45.748
and because it is based on what exists
before the camera.

01:04:45.848 --> 01:04:49.418
Photography
cannot avoid life in all its harshness

01:04:49.418 --> 01:04:51.153
and chaos.

01:04:52.788 --> 01:04:53.356
I remember

01:04:53.356 --> 01:04:56.359
asking, But Tina, what about beauty?

01:04:56.659 --> 01:05:00.196
Shouldn't your proletariat have the right
to elegant flowers and landscapes?

01:05:00.663 --> 01:05:02.131
Anita, she said.

01:05:02.131 --> 01:05:04.400
I prefer truth to beauty.

01:05:04.400 --> 01:05:06.235
But for her
there was beauty in the struggle

01:05:06.235 --> 01:05:08.971
and in the faces
and gestures of the people she loved.

01:05:09.972 --> 01:05:13.175
She started printing on the less
expensive gelatin paper and refused

01:05:13.175 --> 01:05:14.810
wealthy collectors.

01:05:14.810 --> 01:05:17.813
But for me,
she would always be an idealist,

01:05:18.347 --> 01:05:20.750
not a stalwart.

01:05:25.922 --> 01:05:28.291
Sunday spent again at Secretaria.

01:05:28.291 --> 01:05:30.793
More fragments of the new frescoes.

01:05:30.793 --> 01:05:33.696
Diego is so enthusiastic about my copies

01:05:33.696 --> 01:05:37.466
that he would like me to even repeat
the ones Lupercio had done already.

01:05:37.900 --> 01:05:40.903
Too big a job, however, and I said no.

01:05:41.170 --> 01:05:43.606
I've made a series of postcards
of the murals

01:05:43.606 --> 01:05:45.975
and I'm selling them for 50
centavos.

01:05:46.175 --> 01:05:49.178
But lately I have my doubts
about Diego's work.

01:05:49.312 --> 01:05:51.047
He comments too much.

01:05:51.147 --> 01:05:53.983
Lately he paints with an irritating precision.

01:05:53.983 --> 01:05:56.986
He leaves nothing for one's imagination.

01:05:57.787 --> 01:05:59.989
I prefer Orozco’s murals.

01:05:59.989 --> 01:06:04.560
His things overflow with an inner
potentiality which one never feels

01:06:04.560 --> 01:06:06.429
in Diego.

01:06:13.369 --> 01:06:14.103
Suddenly

01:06:14.103 --> 01:06:17.740
we found ourselves
before a beautiful and kind suffragette.

01:06:17.740 --> 01:06:21.744
That among suffragettes may be
the only one that is beautiful and kind.

01:06:22.411 --> 01:06:25.214
Miss Modotti is dressed in a dark
tailored suit,

01:06:25.214 --> 01:06:26.816
high neck silk blouse,

01:06:26.816 --> 01:06:29.452
and smokes one of her favorite
windows cigarettes.

01:06:29.852 --> 01:06:34.523
The enigmatic and suggestive eyes
of the great artist flash with brilliance.

01:06:34.757 --> 01:06:39.261
She tells us she hates retouching, likes
big cities, and loves all things Mexican.

01:06:39.595 --> 01:06:42.331
She shows us her marvelous reproductions.

01:06:42.331 --> 01:06:44.467
Frankly, we do not know which to choose.

01:06:44.467 --> 01:06:48.270
We are enthused by the composition
of heads which file before our eyes,

01:06:48.437 --> 01:06:53.275
lacking those ridiculous poses
so manipulated by vulgar photographers.

01:06:58.447 --> 01:07:01.951
All Modotti knows of photography
she attributes to her teacher,

01:07:01.951 --> 01:07:03.319
Edward Weston.

01:07:03.319 --> 01:07:06.055
But for me she's more abstract,

01:07:06.055 --> 01:07:09.058
more intellectual,
more ethereal than Weston.

01:07:09.392 --> 01:07:13.229
Weston was always wary of
surrendering himself to the picturesque.

01:07:13.696 --> 01:07:16.699
But with Modotti
this problem did not present itself.

01:07:17.033 --> 01:07:20.403
She was able to enter more quickly
into the essence of Mexico,

01:07:20.503 --> 01:07:23.506
to see beneath its crueler externals.

01:07:28.244 --> 01:07:31.247
He speaks in the Zocalo and we swoon.

01:07:31.914 --> 01:07:36.185
Julio Antonio Mella, he of the green eyes

01:07:36.185 --> 01:07:39.622
and skin as golden as the Cuban
beaches he comes from.

01:07:40.656 --> 01:07:44.427
He has a zealous passion about everything,
and that frightens me.

01:07:45.394 --> 01:07:48.397
Just when I have worked so hard
to arrange my life,

01:07:48.531 --> 01:07:51.534
he sweeps by
with all the force of a tornado.

01:07:56.272 --> 01:07:56.972
Julio writes

01:07:56.972 --> 01:08:00.009
a dozen articles for El Machete
that will save the world.

01:08:00.543 --> 01:08:04.113
He talks of literacy programs
and the power of the word.

01:08:04.747 --> 01:08:09.251
He believes in the word, that his
typewriter is as powerful as a gun.

01:08:10.119 --> 01:08:14.957
He plays it all day, staccato,
fortissimo, and then comes to bed.

01:08:52.027 --> 01:08:54.363
In the
morning we walk into the soft light.

01:08:54.363 --> 01:08:56.966
As the mercado has just opened.

01:08:56.966 --> 01:09:00.970
Every day there is a new wave
of campesinos driven off their land

01:09:00.970 --> 01:09:03.973
who arrive in the city looking for work,

01:09:04.039 --> 01:09:07.042
willing to do or sell anything to survive.

01:09:08.177 --> 01:09:10.346
Julio carries my tripod,

01:09:10.346 --> 01:09:13.349
joking
that he is my assistant and protege.

01:09:14.450 --> 01:09:17.453
We walk on seeing the city change
before us.

01:09:29.431 --> 01:09:31.901
We're on the Azotea after comida.

01:09:31.901 --> 01:09:34.503
I take a dozen negatives of Julio
sunning himself

01:09:34.503 --> 01:09:36.138
like a cat.

01:09:50.853 --> 01:09:53.055
I put the negatives in their bath.

01:09:53.055 --> 01:09:56.625
But the images that appear
seem like a strange betrayal of all

01:09:56.625 --> 01:09:58.761
that is between us.

01:09:59.461 --> 01:10:02.665
For me, it will always be
the life beyond the frame

01:10:02.665 --> 01:10:06.302
that is the most important
and more moving than any image.

01:10:12.508 --> 01:10:13.042
Today the

01:10:13.042 --> 01:10:16.045
government brought out troops
against a demonstration.

01:10:16.145 --> 01:10:17.913
We march. We write.

01:10:17.913 --> 01:10:19.548
We go to meetings.

01:10:19.848 --> 01:10:22.251
How feeble it sometimes seems.

01:10:22.585 --> 01:10:25.688
How deluded we are to
think that passionate expression

01:10:25.688 --> 01:10:28.691
and beauty
could shield a body from a bullet.

01:10:32.194 --> 01:10:35.197
We always imagined that we would fight
to the death,

01:10:35.297 --> 01:10:39.201
that violence would be the final,
cathartic orgasm of our revolution.

01:10:39.635 --> 01:10:43.038
For most of us, that remained a fantasy,
but not for me.

01:10:48.978 --> 01:10:51.747
September 15th, 1928.

01:10:51.747 --> 01:10:55.651
Julio, despite all my arguments
and pleading, has left this morning

01:10:55.651 --> 01:10:59.121
for Veracruz to organize
a guerrilla expedition to Cuba.

01:10:59.822 --> 01:11:02.791
God knows
if I will ever see him alive again.

01:11:03.525 --> 01:11:04.760
Tinissima.

01:11:05.194 --> 01:11:08.297
You can imagine that your face never left
me during the entire journey.

01:11:09.665 --> 01:11:11.800
But you know nothing. Do you understand?

01:11:11.800 --> 01:11:13.102
Nothing.

01:11:13.102 --> 01:11:15.204
If any of the party cadre
knew what we were doing,

01:11:15.204 --> 01:11:17.740
they would expel me.
I’ll wire you.

01:11:18.240 --> 01:11:21.043
We have an hour
before we smuggle the weapons aboard.

01:11:21.277 --> 01:11:22.478
This is our one chance,

01:11:22.478 --> 01:11:24.146
while Machado is out of Havana.

01:11:24.747 --> 01:11:27.283
Tina, I can't spend my life

01:11:27.283 --> 01:11:30.119
being a well behaved comrade in Mexico.

01:11:31.820 --> 01:11:33.455
I love you,

01:11:33.455 --> 01:11:35.357
Julio.

01:11:42.031 --> 01:11:45.934
Thursday, January 10th, 1929, 8 p.m..

01:11:46.769 --> 01:11:49.772
Julio, when I leave a meeting
at International Red Aid.

01:11:50.606 --> 01:11:53.342
Julio enters a cafe to meet a Cuban exile

01:11:53.342 --> 01:11:56.378
who promised information on Machado,
the Cuban dictator.

01:11:57.546 --> 01:11:59.648
Julio learns that two Cuban gunmen

01:11:59.648 --> 01:12:02.651
had come to town with orders to kill him.

01:12:03.686 --> 01:12:05.521
9:28 p.m.

01:12:05.521 --> 01:12:08.057
we enter Independencia Street, turn

01:12:08.057 --> 01:12:10.059
left on Balderas.

01:12:13.295 --> 01:12:14.930
9:40 p.m.

01:12:14.930 --> 01:12:17.933
we round the corner to Abraham Gonzalez.

01:12:17.933 --> 01:12:20.936
I hear two shots and feel him fall.

01:12:25.774 --> 01:12:27.276
At 1:40 a.m.,

01:12:27.509 --> 01:12:29.645
after two hours of emergency surgery,

01:12:30.312 --> 01:12:32.648
Julio dies in my arms.

01:12:35.751 --> 01:12:38.754
Francis brings my camera to the morgue.

01:12:38.754 --> 01:12:41.790
I have 15 minutes before they take me back
to the police station.

01:12:42.758 --> 01:12:45.394
My hands take on a life of their own.

01:12:45.627 --> 01:12:49.231
They put in the negative,
find the aperture, press the shutter.

01:12:50.099 --> 01:12:51.767
They do this against time.

01:12:52.000 --> 01:12:53.769
Against death.

01:12:53.769 --> 01:12:55.637
Against the ferocity of a loss.

01:12:55.637 --> 01:12:56.839
I will never bear.

01:13:00.576 --> 01:13:02.177
I haven't slept for days.

01:13:02.177 --> 01:13:04.346
And they won't let me go home.

01:13:04.580 --> 01:13:07.583
I walk them through the murder scene
again and again.

01:13:08.350 --> 01:13:10.419
They tear my apartment apart,

01:13:10.419 --> 01:13:13.188
seizing all my letters and photographs.

01:13:13.188 --> 01:13:15.858
The nudes Weston took of me
and the ones I did

01:13:15.858 --> 01:13:18.861
of Mella, all leaked to reporters.

01:13:19.261 --> 01:13:22.264
The chief of police seems intent
on pinning the murder on me.

01:13:23.399 --> 01:13:24.800
The passion motive,

01:13:24.800 --> 01:13:28.404
he says to the press where I am displayed
as a scarlet woman,

01:13:28.937 --> 01:13:31.940
a foreigner, a dirty communist.

01:13:32.975 --> 01:13:35.244
Tina was cleared finally.

01:13:35.244 --> 01:13:39.681
But Mexican politics were becoming
increasingly paranoid and Machiavellian.

01:13:40.582 --> 01:13:42.951
On February 11th, 1930,

01:13:42.951 --> 01:13:46.321
in a crackdown on communist activities,
Tina was arrested

01:13:46.722 --> 01:13:49.725
on the ludicrous charge
of conspiring to assassinate

01:13:49.725 --> 01:13:51.360
the president.

01:13:53.729 --> 01:13:55.998
In all of these tribulations,

01:13:55.998 --> 01:13:58.834
I often thought of that phrase of Nietzsche.

01:13:59.067 --> 01:14:02.004
What doesn't kill me strengthens me.

01:14:02.004 --> 01:14:04.440
Only thanks to an enormous
amount of willpower

01:14:04.440 --> 01:14:08.577
have I kept from going crazy at moments
when they threw me into an iron cell

01:14:08.577 --> 01:14:11.580
without a mattress,
an ill smelling toilet,

01:14:11.847 --> 01:14:14.716
and I'm in the middle of it all
wondering if it was all a bad dream.

01:14:16.084 --> 01:14:19.555
I cannot afford
the luxury of even my sorrows today.

01:14:19.688 --> 01:14:22.691
I well know this is no time for tears.

01:14:22.791 --> 01:14:26.261
The most is expected from us,
and we must not slacken.

01:14:27.029 --> 01:14:30.833
Neither our consciences nor
the memory of the dead would allow us that.

01:14:32.768 --> 01:14:34.837
They are deporting me
tomorrow morning.

01:14:44.246 --> 01:14:46.815
After Mexico, Tina put
photography aside.

01:14:47.382 --> 01:14:49.818
She wrote me that the light was all wrong
in Berlin

01:14:49.852 --> 01:14:52.187
and the demands of life too urgent.

01:14:52.287 --> 01:14:55.958
She worked for the Communist Party
in Moscow, and with the International

01:14:55.958 --> 01:14:58.961
Brigade in Paris and Spain
during the Spanish Civil War.

01:14:59.328 --> 01:15:01.697
At the end of the war,
she came back to Mexico City

01:15:01.697 --> 01:15:03.732
under a false passport.

01:15:25.988 --> 01:15:26.722
In Mexico,

01:15:26.722 --> 01:15:29.725
we say she's the mother
of modern photography.

01:15:29.725 --> 01:15:32.728
For she's a Mexican photographer
above all.

01:15:32.995 --> 01:15:35.430
She gave us a new way to look at ourselves

01:15:35.430 --> 01:15:38.433
on the street, at work, in the fields.

01:15:38.600 --> 01:15:43.105
She showed us the faces,
the bodies, the vistas of a new Mexico

01:15:43.472 --> 01:15:48.176
one founded on the dignity
and humanity of Indian woman and worker.

01:15:54.283 --> 01:15:57.286
This was
not the Mexico that existed in reality.

01:15:57.286 --> 01:15:59.922
It was the Mexico that she dreamed of,

01:15:59.922 --> 01:16:02.925
that we all dreamed of.