The collection consists in large part of copies of material found in the Russian archive for the study of contemporary historical documents, called the Archive of the Communist International, and also in the Archivio di Soccorso Rosso and the Internazionale Sindacale Rossa. On three brief study trips to Moscow, writer and Tina Modotti biographer Christiane Barckhausen Canale collected letters, dispatches, and reports either signed by Tina or connected with her activity in support of the Soccorso Rosso Internazionale. The State Archive in Rome was a source from which to make copies of documents filed with OVRA - which from 1927 to 1943 investigated into Tina Modotti’s hideouts in Mexico, Berlin, and Paris - as well as copies of correspondence between Tina and her sister Mercedes, then based in Trieste. Other correspondence by Tina Modotti was recovered from the Historical Archive of the Communist Party in Havana; these letters were later confiscated by Mexican police.

  In addition, the Tina Modotti Archive contains all the articles written by Tina in Spanish, Russian, German, and English; all the photographs she published in different countries; and all the biographical documents of historically important figures who came in contact with her. (An example here is the correspondence with Augusto César Sandino, whom Tina met in Mexico, and to whom she confided her intention to fight in the ranks of the oppressed peoples who had taken to the Nicaraguan mountains.)

  Also in the archive are copies of the articles about Tina Modotti that have been published in Mexico and abroad since her death, plus copies of reviews of the work with which she exhibited and of the biographies on her life. This collection is kept constantly updated by Tina Modotti biographers in Italy, Mexico, and the United States.

  Among the audiovisuals in the archive, a copy of the 1920 Hollywood silent "The Tiger’s Coat", which casts Tina Modotti in the leading role.

  A library is being put up that will gather all books on the life of Tina Modotti. A section of this library will have texts in Spanish, Italian, German, and English that focus on questions relative to the places and times which Tina lived in; namely, the US and Mexico in the twenties, Berlin and Moscow in the thirties, and Spain during the Spanish Civil War: the point here is to provide researchers and scholars with easy access to sources that make possible a complete picture of the subject matter.

  Another section of this library will be devoted to the persecution of foreign communists in the USSR under Stalinism.

  At the initiative of Christiane Canale, and thanks to her collaboration, the Tina Modotti archive will have moved by the spring of 2003 from its present location in Berlin to Holy Wood.