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Frida Kahlo – Her Photos exhibition reveals the intimacy of the great Mexican artist and offers a new perspective on the turbulent life of one of the most mysterious and emblematic figures of Latin-American art. Since its first presentation, in Mexico City, in 2009, the exhibition has been touring around the world, reaching almost a million visitors in twenty different cities. The next destination is, for the first time, Budapest, Hungary, where it will be presented at the Mai Manó House, from 18th October 2024 to 12th January 2025.

Despite the importance of photography to Frida, a major part of her collection of photographs was hidden away from the public for several decades. When she died, in 1954, her husband Diego Rivera donated their house – known as the Blue House, in Mexico City – to the Mexican people, so that they could turn it into a museum about Frida’s life and work. This was the beginning of what is nowadays the Frida Kahlo Museum, one of the most popular museums in the world.

Although Diego gave Frida’s artworks and objects to the museum, he asked to lock a part of them away from people’s curious eyes. That is the main reason why this personal archive, which included more than six thousand photographs, some drawings, letters, medicines and clothes, was closed for five long decades. A Blue House’s bathroom was the chosen place to save those treasures, and therefore gained an almost mythical aura.

It was only in 2003 that the numbed archive was opened. A selected part of the newly found photographs was transformed into this exhibition, curated by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, a well-known Mexican photographer and historian of photography in Mexico. Frida Kahlo – Her Photos exhibition shows 241 unpublished photographs that represent diverse periods and people in Frida’s life and which were also objects of her personal affection.

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The exhibition is thematically divided into six sections – The Origins; The Blue House; Politics, Revolutions and Diego; Her Broken Body; Frida’s Loves; and Photography. Besides the historical and artistic value of the presented photos, some of them are also valuable because they were taken by famous photographers who were friends with Frida, such as Man Ray, Martin Munkácsi, Edward Weston, Brassaï, Tina Modotti, Nickolas Muray, Pierre Verger and Lola and Manuel Álvarez Bravo. All the works included in the show and many more can be found in its catalogue, Frida Kahlo – Her Photos, which is the result of a meticulous selection of the thousands of photographs that were found in the closed bathroom.

Photography always played an important role in Frida’s life. Her grandfather and father were professional photographers and she herself was passionate about this art. During her lifetime, Frida gathered a significant collection of daguerreotypes and visiting cards from the 19^th century, of photographs showing her family and friends, of powerful portraits of herself, as well as of some photographs upon which she intervened, cutting things off them, writing dedications and personalizing them as if they were paintings. For Frida, photography was a precious relic of the past, an object to be cherished and a powerful tool for creative work. The collection reflects the intimacy of the painter and her interests during her tormented life.

It was only with the discovery of Frida Kahlo’s photographic archive that it became evident that the origins of many of her charismatic works lie in photographic composition. Her self-portraits, for example, were highly inspired by the portraits her father took of himself. Pablo Ortiz Monasterio adds that the collection of photographs itself, the way it has been grouped and worked on, constructs a portrait of Frida. Consciously or not, through an immense diversity of photographs, carefully kept, cherished and intervened, the artist reveals the complex fragmentation of her own identity.

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