In 1935, Frida Kahlo discovered that her husband, Diego Rivera, had cheated on her. So she posed for a portrait. In the portrait, taken by her friend, Lucienne Bloch, Kahlo locks eyes defiantly with the camera's lens. In her arms she hugs a bottle of Cinzano vermouth. Atop her head she wears a severe, boyish haircut - a sharp rebuke to Rivera, who had especially adored her long locks.

It wasn't that Kahlo was faithful either. She engaged in relationships with men and women throughout her tempestuous marriages (they divorced once and married twice) to Rivera. But in this case, Rivera had cheated with Kahlo's sister, Cristina. So Kahlo had her hair cut. And then she posed.

Standing before the viewfinder of a photographer's lens, Kahlo found the total control and dominion that was often lacking in the rest of her life.

Many of those images, some shot by famed photographers, some by friends and some self-portraits, are featured in "Frida Kahlo: Images of An Icon," exhibited through March 5 at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Since her death, Kahlo has gained renown as a painter and a favored daughter of her native Mexico and become something of an icon of the feminist movement. But in life, she was often overshadowed, literally and artistically, by Rivera, and she was limited by the chronic pain, frailty and preoccupation with death that resulted from a freak car accident that occurred when she was a teenager.

Often when she was before a camera, though, Kahlo transformed into precisely who she wanted to be. Before Edward Weston she wore oversized Colombian beads and became a staid, grand dame.

An illusion photo by Lola Alvarez Bravo offers "The Two Fridas," an image that, at first, appears to show Kahlo looking at herself in a mirror. A closer look, however, reveals that the image Kahlo gazes at is not a mirror image but another version of herself.

An introductory panel says that the exhibit "traces the life and many guises of the formidable and exotic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo."

A statement from Susan Sontag offers insight about why Kahlo and the lens got along so well: "Photography instigates, confirms and seals legends. . . . Seen through photos, people become icons of themselves."

The earliest images of Kahlo in the show depict a demure young woman. A crowded family portrait features Kahlo in the back row, unsmiling. At the time, she was three years past the accident that marred her life.

During her long convalescence, her father gave her paints and small canvases and she began to develop her artistic self, often incorporating her love of native Mexican icons and lore.

Kahlo was not a beauty in a classic sense, but she had a passionate presence that commanded attention and affection; recently a critic in The New Yorker referred to her "pansexual charisma."

Included is a photo- also by her friend Bloch - standing before a "unity" mural she was working on with Rivera at New York's Rockefeller Center. Over her head is a lifelike image of Vladimir Lenin; that image was whitewashed years later as Lenin was revealed and disgraced.

During this time, Kahlo wrote in her diary, "I wish to cooperate with the Revolution in transforming the world into a classless one." As she came to more deeply identify as a leftist sympathizer, she sometimes wore the clothes and demeanor of what she saw as the working class. A 1941 photo of her at her family home in Mexico has Kahlo leaning against a wall, smoking, wearing a simple blouse and jeans.

The show originated at Throckmorton Fine Art in New York; it appears in Exeter thanks to a chance meeting between Lamont Gallery Director Karen Burgess Smith and a Phillips Exeter alumnus who was hosting the show at a Tacoma, Wash., gallery.

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