A raw and intimate visual journey through illness, identity, and resilience

Disko Bay is proud to present Frida Forever by Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø, a photobook exploring life with chronic illness contrasted with the freedom of youth. The book intertwines photographic self-portraits and staged compositions with energetic snapshots in an original work that uses a raw yet playful photographic style to tell a powerful, personal, and vulnerable story.

In 2012, Frida leaned against a railing on a bridge, which broke, causing her to fall 4.5 meters onto asphalt, breaking her back. Since then, she has been paraplegic and reliant on a wheelchair. In 2018, doctors discovered she also has a cellular abnormality that causes the formation of large, dead calcium deposits. As a result, she has spent much of her adult life in and out of hospitals, undergoing more than 100 surgeries, along with numerous medical treatments and radiation therapy.

During her many hospital stays, she has photographed herself, the hospital space, and her surroundings. The raw and tender images are juxtaposed with depictions of her transition from youth to adulthood, poignantly illustrating the stark duality between freedom and the constraints of illness—a kind of double-edged freedom versus the finite and impermanent state of “being healthy.” With a sharp and intelligent perspective, Frida uses her visual narrative to embrace the experience of being alive and the vulnerability of the human body. The book offers a glimpse into the sick yet capable body, standing at the crossroads of being ill, young, and both simultaneously.

This book is a testament to life in hospital—the physical place to which you are sent when ill. This is where I spend much of my time. But above all, it is about me, Frida. I turn the camera to myself not only because I am often alone, but because my sick body, with its scars, metal implants and all its fragility, is the landscape I know best. It is my specialty.