“Frida Forever was never a planned project, a structured concept. It was born from a state of being: I was there, I was sick, and I was a photographer – so, I took photos,” says Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø. At 14, the Danish artist fell over 4 meters when the railing of a bridge she was leaning on gave way.
Her fall onto the asphalt broke her back and injured her spinal cord, leaving her paraplegic. In 2018, she was also diagnosed with a cellular abnormality that causes bone formations in soft tissues. Over the years, she has undergone more than a hundred surgeries, numerous medical treatments, and radiation therapy.
Working hard to regain her independence, her photographic practice naturally merged into her daily life. It started with a self-portrait assignment during her studies at the Copenhagen School of Photography, and eventually infused all aspects of her work. Scans and X-rays appear alongside more personal analog and digital images.
Everywhere, spontaneity and staging converse. Against the violence of a body battered and wounded, driven by slow healing, stand moments of grace, a freshness guided by the youthful evolution of her mind. “I wanted to capture the full complexity of living in a disabled body – not just the raw reality, but also the intimacy, the vulnerability. These contrasts exist in a space that is at once soft and brutal, clinical and personal, beautiful and painful,” she states.
Prisoner of her own body
Through Frida Forever, Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø offers a visceral narrative – a reflection on authenticity, on the loss of control and its reclaiming. Using flash, she highlights wounds and scars, making the hospital the setting of her story – a space that shifts between hyper-realism and fantasy – and fights to make the sick body visible. “I’m deeply inspired by Jo Spence, a British photographer who challenged the medical gaze by documenting her cancer, blending activism and self-exploration. Hannah Wilke, on her part, tackled beauty ideals of the female body during her own battle with cancer. Despite its serious subject, her project was full of humor,” she recounts.
Naturally, the artist cites Frida Kahlo, with whom she shares “more than just a first name.” “We both suffered spinal injuries, endured long hospital stays, battled infections, survived amputations,” the photographer recalls. Like the Mexican painter, Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø stages the prison of her own body, the alienation from oneself, intimate suffering as a universal fight. “Her ability to merge personal and political reflection speaks to me deeply,” she affirms. A theme with radical and decidedly contemporary aspirations “that have and will continue to influence [her] visual language.”
And though Frida Forever takes a permanent form as a book, the photographer intends to continue – “as the book’s title suggests” – documenting her daily life. “It’s a step, not an endpoint,” she concludes.
Frida Forever is available from Diskobay for €40.
