Gerda Taro, une photographe révolutionnaire dans la guerre d’Espagne

For decades she was simply considered a banal colleague-mistress of photographer Robert Capa, the founder of Magnum. We must say she did disappear well before her very famous fiancé (she in July 1937, crushed by a tank during the Spanish Civil war, he in Indochina in 1954) and she did not have the means to gain recognition. Fortunately others did it for her such as Richard Whelan (in his biography of Capa) or Irme Schaber, who delivers in this book the results of an investigation that lasted for years. It turns out that the young and attractive Polish Jewish woman, born in 1910, arrived in Paris in 1933 where she mingled with the avant-garde of the time, was truly talented. To proove it, we see a certain number of images of the Civil War, until now believed to be Capa’s, and which actually were taken by her. Images of conflict (the attacks with Republican soldiers in sandals and the «dinamiteros», the withrawal with convoys of the injured) as well as portraits of peasants, bakers, orphans. In these days in which we avidly search for romantic destinies, she has all it takes to be converted into a pasionaria: her premature death, her beauty, her aura… and her talent finally recognized.

• Gerda Taro, une photographe révolutionnaire dans la guerre d’Espagne by Irme Schaber, published by Anatolia/Le Rocher, 2006, 330 p., 23 €.

• Recommended as well: L’ombre d’une photographe, Gerda Taro (The shadow of the photographer, Gerda Taro) by François Maspero, Le Seuil, 2006, 144 p., 14 €