Gerda Taro, the forgotten photographer
« German-Jewish photographer (1910-1937), the first woman photographer to die on the front, long eclipsed by Robert Capa. »
Born Gerta Pohorylle in Stuttgart, an anti-fascist militant, Gerda Taro fled Nazi Germany for Paris in 1933. There she met André Friedmann, taught him how to sell himself as a photographer, and together they invented the pseudonym "Robert Capa." They took the names "Endre Friedmann" and "Gerda Taro" themselves.
A couple and a reporting duo, they covered the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1937 — Cordoba, Madrid, the Brunete front. Taro published under her own name in Vu, Regards, Ce soir. Her images of the Republican defence, long confused with Capa's, were only properly attributed in the 21st century.
On 25 July 1937, leaving Brunete on the running board of a car, she was crushed by a Republican tank in the confusion of a retreat. She died at 26. Solemn funeral in Paris, organised by the PCF. The "Mexican Suitcase," rediscovered in 2007, contains hundreds of her negatives.