JANUARY 11, 1929 (THE DAY JULIO MELLA DIED)

2013

The magazine contribution following an invitation of the museum in progress consists of two photographs of two different re-enactments of the same crime: the assassination of the Cuban communist Julio Antonio Mella (1903–1929), who was shot in the night of January 11, 1929 in a street of Mexico City. The only witness of the crime was his partner, the photographer Tina Modotti (1896–1942).

Like it would still be common today a reconstruction of the assassination was arranged to be photographed at the scene of the crime – Mexico was one of the first countries to use photography for police work. What is exceptional in this case, however, is that Modotti organised a second reconstruction with prominent support from her artistic, leftist friends – after the re-enactment of the police failed to clarify the facts. In this second reconstruction Modotti takes on her own role (see photograph on the right).

The case of Mella is not only interesting because the images associated with it do not show the actual event but merely reconstructions, which are more or less fictitious: That there is more than just one such reconstruction brings the fragility of this police research method to the fore, the plurality of perspectives that can be taken in the re-staging of a crime.