Photographs for more than the historical record: the social, pedagogical and artistic work of Tina Modotti in the “Escuelas Libres de Agricultura”

ABSTRACT During the 1920s in Mexico, there was intense culture production that was markedly political. Tina Modotti and others artists from different areas began producing art that was public, meaning art made by people and for the people. Tina was an Italian photographer who moved to Mexico in the early 1920s. His portfolio includes photographs of murals, peasants, communist symbols, worker strikes and protests, plants, architecture, skulls, and agricultural schools, among other themes. His photographs were featured in countless publications, from art magazines to the promotional documents and circulars of new agricultural schools, which shows that the photographs had social and pedagogical meaning in addition to their artistic merits.