Gerda Taro | |
|---|---|
 Taro in Spain, July 1937, with Leica camera and 5cm Summar lens | |
| Born | Gerta Pohorylle (1910-08-01)1 August 1910[1] |
| Died | 26 July 1937(1937-07-26) (aged 26) |
| Resting place | Cimetière du Père-Lachaise,Paris,France |
| Years active | 1935–1937 |
| Employer | Alliance Photo |
| Partner | Robert Capa (1935–1937) |
| Parents |
|
Gerta Pohorylle (1 August 1910 – 26 July 1937), known professionally asGerda Taro, was a Germanwar photographer active during theSpanish Civil War. She is regarded as the first femalephotojournalist to have died while covering the frontline in a war.[3]
Taro was the companion and professional partner of photographerRobert Capa, who, like her, wasJewish. The name "Robert Capa" was originally an alias that Taro and Capa (born Endre Friedmann) shared, an invention meant to mitigate the increasing political intolerance in Europe and to attract the lucrative American market. Therefore, a significant amount of what is credited as Robert Capa's early work was actually created by Taro.[4]
Gerta Pohorylle was born on 1 August 1910 inStuttgart,Germany, to Gisela Boral and Heinrich Pohorylle, amiddle-class Jewish family that had recently emigrated fromEast Galicia. She studied atQueen Charlotte High School (de), spent a year at aLausanne boarding school,[5][6][7] and later attended a business college.
In 1929, the family moved toLeipzig, just prior to the rise of Nazi Germany. Taro opposed theNazi Party and became interested inLeftist politics. In 1933, following the Nazi party's coming to power, she was arrested and detained for distributing propaganda against the National Socialists. Eventually, the entire Pohorylle household was forced to leave Germany toward different destinations. Taro, age 23, headed for Paris, while her parents attempted to reachmandatory Palestine. Her brothers went to England. She would not see her family for the rest of her life.[7][8][9]
Taro's career was brief, but with great impact on photojournalism, especially in war. Hanno Hardt described her work with Robert Capa in the Spanish Civil war in this way: "Taro and Capa helped invent the genre of modern war photography while fueling the vicarious experience of the spectator by offering an approximation of life in the conflict zone."[10]
When Pohorylle moved toParis in 1934 to escape theanti-Semitism ofHitler's Germany she met the photojournalistEndre Friedmann,[11][12] aHungarian Jew, learned photography and became his personal assistant. They fell in love.[13] From October 1935, Pohorylle began to work atMaria Eisner's Alliance Photo as apicture editor.[6][8][9][14][15] Pohorylle also learned to take photographs as the only way to legalize her situation; the French authorities were granting residency at that time to photojournalists, her first accreditation being dated 4 February 1936, issued by the ABC Press-Service agency in Amsterdam. Not only did the document authorise her resident status in France, but also allowed, and encouraged, her to work as a photojournalist.[16] Then, she and Friedmann devised a plan where Friedmann claimed to be the agent of photographerRobert Capa, a name they invented. She introduced pictures by the fictitious American Capa to Alliance in the hope of higher royalties, but Eisner recognised his imagery and offered him a lower monthly advance of 1,100 francs in return for covering three assignments a week.[17] Both took news photographs and sold them as the work of the non-existent American photographer Robert Capa;[8] a convenient name overcoming the increasing political intolerance prevailing in Europe and attractive for the lucrative American market.[6] Capa was derived from Friedmann's Budapest street nickname "Cápa" which means "Shark" in Hungarian. The secret did not last long, but Friedmann kept the more commercial name "Capa" for his own name, while Pohorylle adopted the professional name of "Gerda Taro" after the Japanese artistTarō Okamoto and Swedish actressGreta Garbo.[clarification needed][6][8][9][1] The two worked together to cover the events surrounding the coming-to-power of thePopular Front in 1930s France.
When theSpanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Taro travelled toBarcelona, Spain, to cover the events with Capa andDavid "Chim" Seymour. Taro acquired the nickname ofLa pequeña rubia ("The little blonde"). They covered the war together in northeasternAragon and in the southernCórdoba province. Issuing their imagery in common under the alias 'Robert Capa', they succeeded in publishing in important publications including the SwissZürcher Illustrierte, the FrenchVu. Their early war photographs are distinguishable since Taro used aRolleicamera which rendered square format photographs while Capa produced rectangular pictures using aContax camera[citation needed] or aLeica camera. However, for some time in 1937 they each produced similar35 mm pictures under the label of Capa&Taro.[6][8][9][18]
Subsequently, Taro attained some independence. She refused Capa's marriage proposal. Also, she became publicly related to the circle ofanti-fascist European and intellectuals (such asErnest Hemingway andGeorge Orwell) who crusaded particularly for the Spanish Republic.Ce soir, a communist newspaper of France, signed her for publishing Taro's works only. Then, she began to commercialise her production under the Photo Taro label.Regards,Life,Illustrated London News andVolks-Illustrierte (the exile edition ofArbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung) were among the publications that used her work.[6][8]
Reporting theValencia bombing alone, Taro obtained the photographs which are her most celebrated. Also, in July 1937, Taro's photographs were in demand by the international press when, alone, she was covering theBrunete region nearMadrid forCe Soir. Although theNationalist propaganda claimed that the region was under its control, theRepublican forces had in fact forced that faction out. Taro's photographs were the only testimony of the actual situation.[6][8][9]
During her coverage of the Republican army retreat at theBattle of Brunete, Taro hopped onto the runningboard ofGeneral Walter's car that was carrying wounded soldiers.[19] As reported inLe Soir on Tuesday 27 July 1937 and relayed in theBelfast Telegraph;
During the fighting at Brunete on Sunday [25 July] Mlle. Taro rallied a retreating group of militia, and persuaded them to return to occupy one of the trenches, where they withstood an intense bombardment for an hour. When forced to retreat, Mlle. Taro jumped on the running board of a car. An insurgent tank rushing up to the lines emerged suddenly from a side road and collided with the car. Mlle. Taro was rushed to hospital atEscorial seriously hurt and given blood transfusion, but died yesterday morning.[3]
Taro's critical wounds caused her death on 26 July 1937.[6][19]
The circumstances of Taro's death have been questioned by British journalistRobin Stummer, writing in theNew Statesman.[20] Stummer citedWilly Brandt, later Chancellor of West Germany, and a friend of Taro during the Spanish Civil War, saying that she had been the victim of the Stalinist purge of Communists and Socialists in Spain who were not aligned to Moscow.[20] Taro was "warned by Willy Brandt in the summer of 1937 against working in Spain," yet she went there anyway, not controlled by the left in Moscow.[10]
In an interview with the Spanish dailyEl País, a nephew of a Republican soldier at the Battle of Brunete explained that she had died in an accident. According to the eye-witness account, she had been run over by a reversing tank and she died from her wounds at the El Goloso English hospital a few hours later. The tank driver did not realize what he had done.[21]
Due to her political commitment, Taro had become a respected anti-fascist figure. On 1 August 1937, on what would have been her 27th birthday, theFrench Communist Party gave her a grand funeral in Paris, drawing tens of thousands of people on to the streets,[22] buried her atPère Lachaise Cemetery, and commissionedAlberto Giacometti to create a monument for her grave.[23]
In early 2018, a photograph purported to be an image of Taro on her deathbed in the English war hospital was released by the son of the Hungarian physician, Dr Kiszely, who treated her.[24]
On 26 September 2007, theInternational Center of Photography opened the first major U.S. exhibition of Taro's photographs.[25]
In October 2008, the City of Stuttgart named a square at the intersection of Hohenheimer, Dannecker and Alexander Strasse after Taro: the Gerda-Taro-Platz.[26] The square was redesigned in 2014, with an inauguration ceremony on 18 November, to include nine metalsteles, each with one letter of her name cut out, visible from a distance.[27][28]
In the summer of 2016 an open-air display of Taro's Spanish Civil War photographs was part of thef/stop photography festival in Leipzig. When the festival ended, it was decided the display, partly paid for bycrowdfunding, would become permanent. Shortly after, on 4 August, the display of Taro's work was destroyed by smearing it with black paint. With a crowdfunding project to restore the work ongoing, the destroyed work remains in place. It is suspected the destruction is motivated by anti-refugee or anti-semitic sentiments.[29]
The novelWaiting for Robert Capa, bySusana Fortes (2011 – English translation by Adriana V. López), is a fictionalized account of the life of Taro and Capa.
The documentary film,The Mexican Suitcase (2011), tells the story of a suitcase of 4,500 lost negatives taken by Taro, Capa and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War.[18] The suitcase, and the negatives, are currently housed at the International Center of Photography in New York City.[30] The stage playShooting With Light, produced by theater company Idle Motion, is based on this film. In sorting through the works of this collection, many photographs once attributed to Capa were found to be Taro's, thus allowing a greater understanding of her contribution to photojournalism.[1] Describing one difference in her style as compared to that of Capa, curator Kristen Lubben said "Her pictures are much more posed, using strong camera angles. Capa was much more into movement."[1]
The British indie rock bandalt-J's song "Taro" is about her role as a war photographer during the Spanish Civil War as well as her relationship to Capa. The song describes the graphic details of Capa's death ("A violent wrench grips mass / Rips light, tears limbs like rags") and imagines Taro's complementary emotions.[31][32][better source needed]
In 2017 theCity Council of Madrid decided to name a street in the city Calle Gerda Taro (Gerda Taro Street), a street running from Avenida de la Victoria to Calle Durango; it is located northwest from the city center along the route A6.[33][34]
The city of Paris did the same in 2019 with the newRue Gerda Taro, in the13th arrondissement, by unanimous vote of the political groups of theCouncil of Paris.
In 2018, the city of Leipzig named a newgymnasium for 1,200 students after Taro; it is near the display of her photographs on permanent exhibition.[35]
She was highlighted onGoogle’s Doodle on August 1, 2018.[36]
In 2017 she was the subject of the novelThe Girl with the Leica, byHelena Janeczek.[37]
In the 2022International Center of Photography exhibition, "Death in the Making: Reexamining the Iconic Spanish Civil War Photobook," new revelations and significance about Gerda Taro's contribution toRobert Capa's photobook, "Death in the Making," are highlighted.[38]
In 2023 she was the subject of the verse novel,One Last Shot, by Kip Wilson.[39]
Death in the Making: Reexamining the Iconic Spanish Civil War Photobook, September 29, 2022 – January 9, 2023,International Center of Photography, New York, NY.[38]
Photographs by Taro and Capa
Notes
Her death in 1937 remains shrouded in mystery. Was she crushed accidentally by an out-of-control Republican tank during a retreat of the Republican forces, or killed deliberately, as has been suggested, because she had become too uncontrollable as a propagandist for Moscow?
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Further reading
