In 1950, the photographer Gisèle Freund embarked on a two week trip to Mexico, but she wouldn’t leave this country “where nothing is mediocre or insignificant” until two years later. Here she met the legendary couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Welcomed into their home, she immersed herself in their private lives and the cultural and artistic diversity of the country, taking hundreds of photographs. Kahlo and Rivera opened up to Freund, trusting her to photograph them as they went about their daily business. Freund sometimes posed them and at other times caught them by surprise, at work and during private moments, creating images that offer a revealing look into their lives and art.
These powerful photographs, among the last taken before Kahlo’s death two years later, bear poignant witness to her beauty and talent. Showcasing more than one hundred of these rare images, many of which have never been published before, this book also includes previously unpublished commentary by Gisèle Freund about Frida Kahlo and Freund’s stay with the couple, texts by Kahlo’s biographer Gérard de Cortanze and art historian Lorraine Audric, as well as a link to a previously unreleased color film, shot by Freund, showing Diego Rivera at work.
