8. Edward Weston
1886-1958
Untitled (Tina on the Azotea, with Kimono), 1924 Palladium print. 5 3/4 x 8 1/ 2 in. (14.6 x 21.6 cm) Annotated by the artist in pencil on the verso. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist, 1925 By descent from the original owner Private Collection, California
The gorgeous and unabashedly sensual photograph being ofered is the only known print of this image. It is from a famous series of photographs by Edward Weston of his lover Tina Modotti on a tiled roofop (azotea) in Mexico in 1924. Hereto unknown, this perhaps unique palladium print was either given or sold (it has the price written in pencil on the print verso in Weston’s hand) to a friend and fellow photographer of Japanese American descent at the time of Weston’s 1925 exhibition at the Shaku-do-sha Camera Club, a Japanese Camera Club on First Street in Los Angeles. It was recently rediscovered when purchased by a California collector as part of a group of Weston prints, several of which are well known today but others, particularly those from Weston’s early days in Mexico, had been lost in history. In his essay, “Dating Edward Weston’s Tina on the Azotea,”1 Thomas Knight argues that Tina on the Azotea (fg. 4), typically dated 1923, was in fact one
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from a group of photographs taken in 1924 which he refers to as “Weston’s only known photographic record of a model disrobing…” Though Knight does not reference the current lot, presumably because scholars were not aware of its existence, its placement within the group is clear. The series begins with Weston’s image of Tina wrapped in her kimono, Hands against Kimono. The negative for this image resides in the Weston archive at the Center for Creative Photography along with that of the fourth image in the series. The second image Knight identifes depicts a loosening of the kimono to expose Modotti’s lef breast and the top of her pubic hair. Though the whereabouts of this negative is unknown, a vintage print of it is in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the third image, Modotti’s kimono is completely removed but remains in the picture draped on the foor of the azotea in front of where Modotti is now positioned: outstretched, back to the camera, resting on her lef
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Photographs by Edward Weston. Clockwise from below: Hands against Kimono, 1924. Untitled, 1924. Tina on the Azotea, with kimono, 1924. Nude, 1924. 1
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