Badass Frida

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you."
Frida Kahlo

So I've been taking this awesome class called Photographing People at New England School of Photography and we have assignments every week based on a different theme. I couldn't help but do a self portrait for this particular assignment where we had to reinterpret an iconic image. I have always been very intrigued by Frida, the way she expressed through clothing and art and also because we share similar names! I knew right away when we got the assignment I wanted to do Frida. I started doing some research on her to just get a better feel for things and ended up spending days reading about her life. I was in awe at her ability to channel pain and raw emotions into self portraits. I was also fascinated with her transformation into the iconic image we know of her today. I found out Frida was half German and born Frieda, later changing her name to Frida. As a teen she actually experimented with men's clothing and wore modern clothing of her time period up until she met Diego who influenced her to reconnect with her Mexican roots. In many ways she dressed that way for him because he loved seeing her in the cultural clothing of Mexico. After their divorce (later remarried him) she cut off all her hair to spite him. The styling I did was inspired by the masculine and feminine traits she explored both in her clothing and spirit. I feel like if she were reincarnated she would be pretty ‬bad ass so I did a black lip to show a modern take. I stripped the color out of the flowers and clothing and wore a men's button up shirt (Thanks Anthony!). The background color was inspired by an image I love of her in front of a dark turquoise wall. I really love how it came to life. Channeling her into a personal self portrait was pretty 😎

I wanted to put this up as I haven't posted in a while! If you follow me on Instagram (which you should!) you may have seen it already. I've been editing client work and keeping busy in a good way with some fun shoots I can't wait to share! I hope to get back to documenting some of my outfits on here though.

XO
Feda/Frida for this post at least :)