the livingblog

Lynn’s unending capacity to re-imagine personal identity, performance, surveillance, voyeurism, and interactivity across media has contributed to her status as a groundbreaking feminist and new media artist. She shares this chameleonic characteristic with the late great actor, photographer, and activist Tina Modotti (1896-1942).  As Sarah Coleman, in a review of Patricia Alber’s Modotti biography Shadows, Fire, Snow, quotes:

Modotti was a “shape-shifter,” a woman who was, at different times, an actress, a photographer, a revolutionary and an international undercover agent. By the time she died, in 1942 at the age of 45, Modotti had packed several lifetimes into one short span.

Modotti in the 1920 film The Tiger's Coat.

Sound familiar? We thought so.

This Sunday, June 28, at the historic City Lights bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, Modotti will be honored for her enormous contributions to international culture and the history of the city, where she immigrated in 1913 from Italy at the age of sixteen and lived until 1918.

It is a ceremony made possible by the Tina Modotti Heritage Committee, of which Lynn, along with B. Ruby Rich, Alexandra Chowaniec, and Alexandra Creighton, is a founding member. Lynn has been a documentarian of feminist art and artists for decades, and is a fervent advocate for the recognition of “the truly exceptional-yet largely unrecognized- artistic heritage of San Francisco.” It will include a presentation by special guest and aforementioned Modotti biographer Patricia Albers, and will pay tribute to Modotti’s life and work as well as her special relationship to San Francisco.

So please, join us this Sunday at 5 PM in the Poetry Room at City Lights, followed by a toast at Tosca Café in North Beach. Satisfy your (not so?) inner bohemian with an appearance, and celebrate the astounding life and legacy of a cultural icon.