Many women refugee photographers had social-democratic, left-leaning sympathies, shaped by the tumultuous politics of ‘Red Vienna’ and Weimar Berlin. However, Edith Tudor-Hart was unique among the group in her use of photography for directly political purposes. 

During the 1920s she was recruited by the Communist International (Comintern) in Vienna and worked as a low-level Soviet agent in London, a role which has sometimes overshadowed her photography.