In this intimate self-portrait, Iturbide puts herself in Kahlo’s place—showing her own suffering feet after a recent operation, pressed up against the end of Kahlo’s bathtub, below the two handles and faucet. The photograph evokes one of Kahlo’s famous paintings, "What the Water Gave Me" (Lo que el agua me dio, 1938), in which her two manicured feet rest against the end of a tub as surreal images float on the surface of the bathwater.
When Frida Kahlo died in 1954, her grief-stricken husband, muralist Diego Rivera, took her personal belongings and locked them in her bathroom in her home, the Casa Azul, in Mexico City. Fifty years later, the space was finally opened, and Iturbide was commissioned to photograph it. Through Iturbide’s photographs, we enter into the legendary painter’s private life and encounter a composite portrait of Kahlo’s suffering and resilience. Both Iturbide and Kahlo have seen their art as a form of therapy and escape. Through this project, Iturbide grapples not only with the cultural and symbolic legacy of the painter, but with her own legacy as well.