Lost and Found

By Brigitte Istim

Gerda Taro died aged just 26, the first female war photographer known to have been killed in action. Shortly before her death whilst covering the retreat of the Spanish Republican forces from the city of Brunete she turned to a friend and said:

“When you think of all the fine people we both know who have been killed even in one offensive, you get an absurd feeling that somehow it’s unfair still to be alive.”

Taro identified passionately with the left-wing Republican side in Spain’s Civil War; on one occasion she leapt out of a dug-out and shouted at retreating Republican soldiers, telling them to reform their lines. She was a combatant for the Republican cause, using a camera instead of a gun.

Taro’s funeral in Paris on 1^st August 1937 was attended by thousands. Ce Soir, one of the left-wing Parisian papers which had published her work, proclaimed her an anti-fascist martyr. Yet after her death Taro’s reputation evaporated, obscured by her partner Robert Capa’s growing success and by her association with a Communist ideology often viewed as problematic and increasingly outdated.

Rediscovery

Taro’s re-emergence into the public eye owes much to Richard Whelan, Capa’s biographer. In 1980 Whelan was going through a box of Capa’s work when he realised around 140 of the Spanish Civil War photos were marked as having been taken by Taro. Identification was helped by the fact that at this time Taro was using a Rolleiflex camera that produced square prints in contrast to the rectangular ones taken by Capa on a Leica.

The rediscovery of Taro’s work brought to light a fascinating perspective not only on the Spanish Civil War but on the emergence of photo-journalism as a discipline in its own right. The 1920s and 1930s saw the emergence of magazines like Life, Picture Post and Vu where photos were a staple element, used to tell stories and sum up events and even philosophies – the zeitgeist of the times.

A New Vision

Taro’s Spanish Civil War photos cover a small period of time but a wide variety of styles. Behind the battle lines she took quite formal, posed pictures like her shot of a Republican militia woman training on a beach near Barcelona. Here Taro crouches just below the level of her subject and captures the woman half-kneeling, silhouetted against a cloudy sky, gun raised and levelled against the coming enemy.

Irme Schaber, whose biography of Taro was published in 1994, described how some of Taro’s images, often ‘photographed from an audacious angle’, helped create a ‘romantic’ aura for the Spanish Civil War. Taro was certainly influenced by photography’s ‘New Vision’ movement which sought to bring modern technologies and sensibilities into pictures of everyday life.

On the battlefield Taro proved capable of taking very different photos, pictures that capture the haste and confusion of war. Much of the time she seems to have been literally running in the soldiers’ footsteps, taking roll after roll of film as events enfolded her.

Another Chapter

Gerda Taro’s story is extraordinary, marked as it is by a strong ‘lost and found’ symmetry. During her years of obscurity even her memorial – apparently designed by Alberto Giacometti – in Paris’s Pere Lachaise cemetery was removed and destroyed.

Recently, in January 2008, the International Center of Photography in New York announced the discovery of a cache of over 3,500 negatives of the Spanish Civil War.  Some of these are thought to be Taro’s work – another posthumous chapter to her short life.

For main article see: This Is War