Invoking Frida

I am obsessed with Frida Kahlo. I could never lie about that.

In her life, I found and forevermore find the passion that fuels my own. In her art, I found and forevermore find the inspiration to be honest, to bare the most brutal and most fragile things I have known. A few years ago, when my longtime interest in this extraordinary woman started to turn into a more devouring love, I was beginning to grapple with the first critics who knew me only because of my own work. I was told, in some instances, that I was insular and overtly narcisstic, that my work -- words, dance, art -- held gravity only for me. But the more I discovered Frida, the stronger my own faith in my work grew. The more I discovered Frida, the more the shape of my own life revealed itself to me.

I have been compiling these photos of Frida since last year. It began initially as a personal hobby, simple bookmarking for sheer love, until I realised the size -- the burgeoning size, in fact -- of the collection I was amassing. These photos are from all over the Internet, taken by a variety of photographers whose names I largely didn't manage to record (Lucienne Bloch and Nickolas Murray are ones I know for sure are represented).

Today would have been her 99th birthday. She was born July 6th 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico. I realise that I am operating on the assumption that at least the basic details of her life -- her illnesses, her volatile marriage to Diego Rivera, her flamboyant fashion sense, her penchant for visceral self-portraiture at least -- are known to you, thanks to Hollywood and scandal. If they are not, I can only hope that I am not also operating on the assumption that you know how to Google. :)

Frida Kahlo speaks to my soul in ways I cannot begin to describe, except perhaps to say that from her I have drawn immense comfort. I have understood my passions better, and understood defending them. I can think of no better tribute on her birthday than to invoke her, by way of the one thing she most invoked herself as a gift and a legacy: her image.

















































































































With her husband, the celebrated Diego Rivera.





























































The last picture taken of Diego and Frida together before her death.







They always did have a sense of humour. Here, posing with gas masks.









As a child, with sisters and friends.



With her sister, Cristina.



With Cristina (legs dangling) and others.



With her sister, Mathilde.





With the Trotskys.



I wouldn't normally bookmark a picture where Frida's presence isn't obvious, but I couldn't resist the quaintness of this one -- her in the background with a butterfly net, while Andre Breton and Leon Trotsky talk nearby.



With Teresa Pruenza.



At an afternoon fiesta.



With Nickolas Muray.



With Emmy Lou Packard at a Mayan temple.



With Helena Rubinstein.



With Los Fridos, her group of dearest students.



Late night, accompanying Diego as he worked on a mural in the US.



And here, with Lucienne Bloch too.



With her godson.



With Diego and Lucille and Arnold Blanch.



With Diego, Miguel Covarrubias, Nickolas Muray and others.



Beneath a sign in Gringolandia, her term for the US, which reads "For Negroes".



At the Texan border.



On the train on the way back to Mexico, upon news of her mother's impending death.



Taken by her father, photographer Guillermo Kahlo, in the days after her mother's death.



On a ship near Vera Cruz.



After she cut off her long hair, upon discovering Diego's affair with Cristina.



Update: Reader Anna sent me this amazing, unusual shot of Frida during her time in Paris with Breton and other Surrealists.



Update: Reader Kash sent me this one of her stunning Frida tattoo!



Outside a church.





I bought a very slim introductory biography of her once, despite already owning the marvellous one by Hayden Herrera, simply because I had never seen this photo, until that point, anywhere else, and fell in love with it. This was shortly after the miscarriage documented in her painting Henry Ford Hospital



Here, she appears as though her feet are floating above the ground.