Tape with Frida Kahlo's voice: Doubts multiply | Art | '
The news had caused a worldwide sensation: Experts from the Mexican National Phonotheque had come across a tape recording, on the supposedly the voice of Frida Kahlo is heard. A (possible) sensation, because it would be the first and so far only recording on which the voice of the most famous artist in Latin America is audible.
But now doubts multiply: Relatives and former students deny that the recording is Kahlo's voice. "As far as the Kahlo family knows, there are no recordings of Frida's voice," the relatives said in a statement.
Kahlo's former students Arturo Estrada Hernández and Guillermo Monroy Becerril also doubt that Kahlo's voice is actually heard in the recording. Monroy told the Spanish news agency Efe that he and his friends had lived with Kahlo for a long time – at Casa Azul, Kahlo's home in Mexico City. "I do not recognize her voice," Monroy says. "When I first met her, I noticed that she is a woman with a very sweet, cheerful voice … Frida's true voice was very lively, charming and cheerful, she was not serious, gentle or fragile … she was crystal clear. "
Voice of an actress?
The hot-talked about two-minute recording probably comes from a 1955 aired pilot show for "El Bachiller" and should have been recorded in 1953 or 1954. The program includes a short biography of the painter Diego Rivera, with whom Kahlo was married twice. A woman's voice reads from Kahlo's essay "Portrait about Diego", which appeared in a 1949 exhibition catalog.
Frida Kahlo: Is there any recording of her voice?
In the course of the debate about the recording, the Mexican actress Amparo Garrido spoke up. "I've done a lot of stuff for El Bachiller … I'm almost completely sure I've recorded that too," Garrido told Radio Fórmula. The actress, who starred in "The Snow White" (in the Spanish version of the Disney movie), dated the recording of "Portrait about Diego" – as well as the experts at the National Phonotheque – to the year 1953 or 1954.
Amparo Garrido's son Ismael told Radio Fórmula that he clearly recognized his mother's voice on the supposed Kahlo recording. He also expressed doubts that Kahlo's health at the time of admission was good enough to read the clipping as he is heard on the recording. "Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 and died in 1954 and the photo was taken 65 years ago, so it must be from the year she died," says Ismael Garrido. "That makes things complicated because she spent almost all of the time in the hospital in 1954. Also, the voice (on the recording, editor's note) is a rather patchy one."
Frida Kahlo has left numerous pictures, but a sound recording was not yet known
Testing continues
As doubts continue to grow, experts at the National Phonotheque continue to examine whether the voice on the recording belongs to Frida Kahlo. The total of 1300 tapes of the program "El Bachiller" will also be digitized and cataloged to check whether Kahlo's voice can be heard on any of them.
"The more data and reference material available, the more resilient the forensic statement will be in the end," explains Martin Steinebach, Head of Department Media Security and IT Forensics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology. He and his team have checked for the "mirror" and the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" the authenticity of the so-called Ibiza video, the publication of which had the break of the government in Austria.
The ‘ explains to Steinebach how experts investigate footage such as the one on which Kahlo allegedly heard: "There is biographical information about Frida Kahlo: where did she grow up, who were the parents, does she fit the voice of a woman of this age, There may be a regional accent, and one compares whether the use of the words is typical of the milieu. "
The whole process of verification involves a number of specialists in different fields, and the technical analysis is only performed in the second step. If Martin Steinebach got comparable material to test, it would first be digitized in order to be able to follow up on possible tracks: "With which device was recorded, which year did the device come from? Recordings can have characteristic fluctuations, which is why it is checked whether the behavior of the Tape reel fits the devices of the times. "
Since the recording should come from the 1950s, reference devices would have to be requested from collectors or archives in order to make their own recordings and to be able to compare their fluctuation behavior with the behavior of the material to be examined. "We call it ballistics, the term is used when assigning a bullet to a weapon, and the combination of device and medium is the first step."
Absolute safety will not exist
Especially because there are no references to Frida Kahlo's voice so far, even after a thorough examination of the material, you will not be able to make a complete statement about whether it really is Frida Kahlo, says Martin Steinebach. "But it is not impossible to check without reference whether the speech and the voice fit the given person." Frida Kahlo is a special case because of her illnesses.
Lifelong pain: Frida Kahlo
At the age of six, the artist was suffering from polio. When she was 18, a steel pole in a bus accident pierced her abdomen, "like the sword the bull," as Kahlo himself called it. This was followed by more than 30 operations in as many years. Often she had to lie in bed for weeks, trapped in a steel corset or a full body plaster. These limitations could lead to conclusions about the speech behavior. "A medical forensic scientist could assess whether the voice, the way speech is spoken and the air is drawn, fit the appropriate person," explains Martin Steinebach.
Frida Kahlo, who became popular with folk painting in the styles Surrealism and New Objectivity, is today a myth – also because she fought her way into the male domain of painting. To the Russian revolutionary and communist Leon Trotsky, with whom she had an affair, Kahlo gave a house in which Trotsky hid. Throughout her life, she suffered pain, which she used in her paintings – 55 of her 143 works are self-portraits. The last few years Frida Kahlo spent in a wheelchair, in 1954 she died at the age of 47 years.
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