Frajndlich met the performance artist Minami Azu as she was performing Japanese butoh dance at a subway station in downtown New York. Butoh dance is typically performed in white body makeup and usually includes hyper-controlled gestures and grotesque and absurd imagery and environments. Despite their language barrier, Azu and Frajndlich began a long and productive collaboration and travelled through New York, Italy, and Japan together. Frajndlich, well-known for his photographs of artists, documented Azu’s instinctive interactions with varying environments and often incorporated Azu’s theatrical persona in to works of art, such as Picasso’s portrait of Dora Maar – herself once a muse to an artist.