Tina Modotti in Berlin,

2 February 2023

She arrived in Berlin by train from Holland in the first days of April, hoping to be able to earn her living as a photographer, even though her main objective was to be somewhere she could ‘be most useful to the movement’. It seems Tina was totally unprepared for the situation she encountered: ‘The strain shows on the people; they never laugh, they walk the streets very gravely, always in a hurry and seem to be constantly conscious of the heavy burden which weighs on their shoulders.’ She was also ill-prepared for the climate, with freezing temperatures and no sunshine during her first ten days. Homesick for Mexico and bitter about having to start over, she complained to Weston that ‘for one coming from Mexico the change is rather cruel. But I know that the wisest thing is just to forget sun, blue skies and other delights of Mexico and adapt myself to this new reality, and start, once more, life all over …’