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"Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray" in Corning, NY - US
24 September 2022 | 22 January 2023"Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray", on display at the Rockwell Museum in Corning through Jan. 22, provides an intimate look at Frida through the photographic lens of her long-time friend and lover, Nickolas Muray, a Hungarian immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1913 and helped to popularize color photography in publishing and advertising in the 1930s.
“We were engaged by the idea that Nickolas Muray had played such a strong role in crafting the iconography of Frida Kahlo,” said Kirsty Buchanan, the Rockwell’s curator of collections and exhibitions. “Without him being a pioneer in color photography, we would not have seen this vivid, brilliant, colorful Kahlo. Unlike a lot of other visual artists, what we know of her, and her iconography, is grounded in her as a person rather than her artwork.”
From 1931 to 1941, Muray and Kahlo had an affair that overlapped her two marriages to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, and the ebbing and flowing of their relationship is reflected in Muray’s photos.
“Some of the gazes that they exchanged in the photos are very loaded and meaningful,” Buchanan said. “There are photographs of Muray with Diego and Frida, and everyone's looking at the camera and smiling except for Frida – she’s looking at Muray with very specific intention. And then there are other photographs of Kahlo in front of her easel with Muray in the background, and he's kind of returning that intense gaze.”
Frida Kahlo is still so relevant,” Buchanan said. “We are fascinated with her as a person and as an artist, as well as the artwork that she created. We keep coming back to it and re-evaluating it because it keeps having modern relevant content and messaging for us to consider. And for us to be able to apply to our own lives the sense of specifically and intentionally crafting your image, and owning what you are presenting of yourself and editing your image — that's social media, that’s politics, that’s performance art.
“She definitely was aware of that and was able to harness it to communicate additional information and meaning about herself at a time when her country was not putting women and matriarchal ideas forward.”
taken from the Rochester City Newspaper
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