Even with the centennial exhibition celebrating the life and work of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), organized by the Walker Art Center in 2007, this quixotic figure still has been somewhat shrouded - both by the mystery she herself created as well as by the influence of others in her life, notably her husband, the muralist Diego Rivera.

Frida Kahlo: Her Photographs, a new book just released by RM of Barcelona, is sure to bring much wanted clarity to the this intriguing figure. The photographs, which were collected by Kahlo throughout her life, include family photos that read almost like film stills, for her father, Guilleremo Kahlo, was one of Mexico's most celebrated commercial photographers.

Left to right: Frida In a Suit by Guillermo Kahlo; Frida Kahlo Rivera, 1931 by Imogen Cunningham; Frida Kahlo in Manuel Alvarez Bravo's Studio, 1930s by Manuel Alvarez Bravo.

Frida's childhood was as almost as dramatic as her two marriages to Rivera; she was born of Guilleremo's second marriage, to Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez, an unhappy match made soon after his first wife died in childbirth. Frida had four sisters and two half-sisters; she was the heart's delight of her father, a fact that only distanced her from her siblings and from her mother, making for a somewhat lonely girlhood. But it becomes evident in the early photos that from the outset, Frida was in command of her powers; in the many formal portraits of the family, it is always the girl with the bold eyebrows whose presence dominates the scene.

Later on, the Kahlo/Rivera sphere became a magnet for notable figures in the arts and politics. Among the photographers who joined that charmed circle were Man Ray, Brassai, Imogen Cunningham, Martin Munkacsi, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo, and Giesele Freund; their images are also featured in the book.

The book, which runs to 496 pages, came about when Frida's photography collection was discovered a few years ago, packed away in a  boarded over storeroom in the fabled Blue House, now the Frida Kahlo Museum. There were over 6,000 photographs in the collection, which serves as a testimony to the artist's individuality and to the tastes and interests of the famous couple, not only through the images themselves but also through the telling annotations inscribed upon them.