The task of the present publication is to show how the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) has sought to initiate new narratives and histories of art through a wide selection of acquisitions during 2002-07 of the MACBA Collection. The book includes essays by Manuel J. Borja-Villel, Kaira M. Cabanas and Jorge Ribalta.

Embracing every aspect of Modotti's brief but stellar career and filled with archival images and insightful essays, this is certain to be the definitive reference work on a photographer whose art was suffused with humanity, emotion, compassion and technical brilliance. Tina Modotti's work spans less than a decade, but in that time she created uniquely powerful and lyrical images that combine masterful technique with a deep concern for the rights of the poor and marginalized. Organized thematically, this sweeping overview of her life and oeuvre offers gorgeous reproductions of her portraits, still lifes, architectural images, and documentary photographs. The wide- ranging and substantial biographical material offers important and illuminating background about her experience in the theater and silent film industry, her relationship with Edward Weston and friendships with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, her political radicalization and her activism around worker's rights and Mexico's indigenous peoples. Uniquely adept at spanning the genres of abstraction and landscape, portraiture and photojournalism, Modotti was as talented as she was passionate. This tribute to her life and work firmly establishes her as one of the most important photographers of her time.

This book focuses from a chronological perspective on photography as a tool for a new visuality and the rupture of the role of the spectator: photographic exhibitions from 1928 to 1955, from the spaces designed by Lissitzky's to The Family of Man; the trajectory of utopian architectural-photographic space and from post-Revolutionary Russia to America during the Cold War. This space documents the exhibitions designed by Lissitzky (Pressa, Film und Foto, etc); German, Italian and Spanish exhibitions in the 1930s, and exhibitions in MOMA during the Second World War.