The war photographer known to us today as Gerda Taro was born as Gerta Pohorylle in Stuttgart, the daughter of Jewish-Galician immigrants. Her active opposition to the Nazis forced her into French exile in 1933. In Paris she met and fell in love with the Hungarian photographer André Friedmann. Contact with photographers like Friedmann and Fred Stein, another German exile resident in Paris, helped her to learn the practicalities of photography. Pohorylle and Friedmann together decided to replace their birth names with a pseudonym for marketing purposes: Robert Capa and Gerda Taro were born. Soon after that they embarked to report on the Spanish Civil War.

Taro’s courage cost her her life; she was just 26 when she succumbed to injuries sustained in an accident during an attack by the German Condor Legion on the Brunete Front in the Spanish Civil War. Taro’s funeral service and burial in Paris became a political demonstration as thousands turned out to pay their last respects to a photographer who had become a heroine.

However Taro and her photographic work soon lapsed into obscurity and for many years she stood in the shadow of her partner Robert Capa. Today Taro is regarded as a pioneer of reportage photography. That she was the first woman to take photographs at the height of battle made her a model for later war correspondents. Findings from research into Taro’s life point to her influence on Robert Capa’s career while also highlighting the importance of her own work.

Further reading:
Rogoyska, Jane: Gerda Taro. Inventing Robert Capa. London: Cape 2013
Schaber, Irme: Gerda Taro, Fotoreporterin: mit Robert Capa im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg. Marburg: Jonas-Verlag 2013