El Baño de Frida Kahlo

In 2004, fifty years after Frida Kahlo's death, Graciela Iturbide was granted access to Casa Azul, Kahlo's home in Coyoacán, to photograph objects that had remained locked away in a storeroom since 1954. Among them were the contents of Kahlo's bathroom: medical corsets, prosthetic legs, medicine bottles, and personal items that documented the physical suffering underlying her public image. Iturbide photographed these objects in place, largely undisturbed, rather than staging them for the camera.

The resulting images shift Iturbide's register from documentary observation of communities to a quieter study of absence and intimacy. Stripped of human presence, the photographs use Kahlo's belongings to suggest her body and its history, connecting two of Mexico's most recognized women artists through a shared preoccupation with the body, ritual, and the aftermath of pain.