Family of Matilde Calderón y González

Matilde Calderón y González was Frida Kahlo's mother. Here she appears with all her family. Frida wrote in the photograph, to mark where her mother is.
Since she was a child, Frida was close to photography. She used to accompany her father, Guillermo Kahlo —a well-known photographer of German origins and Hungarian heritage— she helped him in the darkroom, retouching photographic plates. This valuable archive containing more than five thousand images, which for many years remained dormant alongside drawings, stories, clothing, and medicine, is the product of Frida’s perseverance, for she worked, enjoyed, and cherished these pieces. It clearly reflects the artist’s major interests over the course of her turbulent life: her family, her love for Diego and her other loves, her damaged body, art, politics, and science, all of this wrapped in the great passion she had for México and all things Mexican. Frida treasured old family portraits, both on her maternal and paternal sides of the family and of course, those that Don Guillermo took of her, her mother, sisters and close friends. Self-portraits stand out from this group, which from an early age and throughout her life were the ones taken by Frida’s father.