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This captivating documentary tells the extraordinary story of Gerda Taro, a pioneering yet largely unrecognized figure and unsung hero of photojournalism. Born Gerta Pohorylle, Taro fled Nazi Germany and, in Paris, met Endre Friedmann, later known as Robert Capa. Together, they captured the tumult of the Spanish Civil War under aliases Gerda Taro and Robert Capa.
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00:28Transcription by CastingWords
00:30I was looking through this box of old family photographs
00:38and I came across this one.
00:44This I could recognise immediately was my father
00:48when he was very young, 27, 28 years old, in the Spanish Civil War.
00:53And here he is, a picture of him treating this very ill patient
00:59obviously female
01:03and there's a certain tenderness about this photograph
01:08and the expression on my father's face
01:12suddenly made me very proud of him
01:14and what he was doing in the Spanish Civil War.
01:17And I didn't know who the patient was or the circumstances
01:22but I thought I want to share this
01:24and I put it on Twitter
01:26and then over the next few days
01:29there were a number of replies on Twitter
01:33including one saying
01:35could you please give us more details of this picture?
01:39Where was it? Who was the patient?
01:41And I didn't know anything more about it.
01:44But I then looked on the back
01:46and here, in my father's rather bad writing
01:51it says, I think,
01:55Fronte Brunette, Junio 37
01:59then it says,
02:01Mrs. Frank Capper
02:03of Sossois of Paris
02:06killed at Brunette.
02:09A day or two later
02:10somebody replied saying
02:12I think you're talking here about
02:14Gerda Tarot.
02:16And now I didn't know who Gerda Tarot was at all
02:19and then the Twitter went viral.
02:26My father didn't talk a lot about
02:28the Spanish Civil War.
02:30In fact, I learnt more
02:32about how he came to be there
02:35and what he was doing there
02:36from an interview,
02:37an oral tape interview
02:39that he gave back in 1992
02:42which was fascinating.
02:45Any other incidents or anecdotes
02:48that you can give about the Brunette days?
02:51Well, the only thing that
02:55looking back at it
02:57was extra interest to me
02:59that we had a wounded woman
03:01more or less dead
03:02when she came into my hands.
03:04I found out much later
03:06that she was wife
03:08of the famous wartime photographer
03:11Robert Capper.
03:12She was not in the army.
03:14She was a reporter,
03:17newspaper woman.
03:19But I did not know
03:20not a clue who she was
03:22when somebody took a picture
03:24of me cleaning her up,
03:26the blood from her face.
03:27But I did not know who she was.
03:54Gierda Taro.
03:56That's the name you chose for yourself.
03:59Back when photojournalism
04:01was being invented,
04:02you took pictures
04:03of the Spanish Republic's
04:05desperate struggle.
04:06You were creating pioneering work.
04:09But you lost your life
04:11to the misery of war
04:12just before your 27th birthday.
04:16For many years,
04:17you sank into oblivion.
04:19And yet,
04:22your pictures speak
04:23to the roots
04:23of our shared history.
04:25The madness of men,
04:27the pain of war,
04:28but also the ideal
04:30of brotherhood
04:30and hope for a better world.
04:33Your mythical story
04:34deserves to be told.
04:36Your pictures should be dug up.
04:38For that,
04:40we must go on a journey
04:41that mingles the present
04:43and the past.
05:05We could begin this story
05:07in the late summer of 1937.
05:10Robert Capper,
05:11who Time magazine
05:12would come to crown
05:13as one of the greatest
05:14photographers of all time,
05:16was on a boat to New York.
05:18He owed his reputation
05:20to his pictures
05:20of the Spanish Civil War,
05:22which was still raging
05:23when he crossed
05:24the Atlantic Ocean.
05:28He had not been alone.
05:29He had taken up arms
05:31as a war reporter
05:32alongside Gilda Taro.
05:35As a tribute to the woman
05:36he had also deeply loved,
05:38he published a book
05:39of their pictures together,
05:40dedicated to her.
05:43for Gilda Taro,
05:44who spent one year
05:46at the Spanish Front
05:46and who stayed on.
05:50Little did he know
05:51that was the last time
05:52that Gilda Taro's pictures
05:54were brought to light.
05:59For nearly half a century,
06:01they were indiscriminately mingled
06:03with those of her famous partner.
06:07We must follow his footsteps
06:09to find them once more.
06:26Gilda Taro never went to New York.
06:28Yet, that is where her work's legacy lies,
06:32at the International Center of Photography,
06:35created in 1974 by Cornel Capa,
06:38Robert Capa's brother.
06:40He wanted to conserve the archives
06:42of activist photographers,
06:44of lost photographers,
06:45whose pictures aim to change the world.
07:02What makes some of Tara's work
07:05so powerful, I think,
07:08is what she brings to each image.
07:10She was very passionately engaged
07:11with the publican cause,
07:13and I think that engagement
07:15is reflected in every single one
07:21of her images.
07:23Haro was not a sort of objective,
07:27fair and balanced reporter.
07:28She was highly partisan,
07:29and she was making prints
07:31and images to support
07:34the Republican side.
07:35She was going to go right up
07:37to the front lines.
07:38I mean, she wasn't going to sit back
07:40and photograph babies and children
07:41and, you know, happy subjects.
07:44She was really going to go in deep
07:46and to show the kind of real casualty
07:49that she was seeing in Spain.
07:50And I think her images absolutely reflect
07:52that, you know, broader engagement
07:54with war photography.
08:10She died.
08:11She died, and her career was not even a year.
08:14And, in fact, as a photographer at all,
08:16which is quite extraordinary
08:17that she so quickly picked up the camera
08:19and immediately knew how to use it
08:24to make effective, strong, graphic images.
08:32Journalist André Chanson wrote in 1937
08:36that she carried within her
08:38the genie of Madrid,
08:39made of a woman's smile
08:41and the heart of a hero.
08:50Was it heroism?
08:52Where did this sense of urgency,
08:54which led her to risk her life
08:562,000 kilometers away from her birth town,
08:58come from?
09:00Maybe we can find the reasons
09:02for her Spanish engagement in Germany.
09:05In Stuttgart,
09:06the town where she was born
09:07on the 5th of August 1910,
09:09in what was then still called
09:11the German Empire.
09:39there was no news about her.
09:39Überhaupt nach Spanien,
09:40darüber war fast nichts bekannt.
09:44Und das war das,
09:45was mich dann interessiert hat.
09:47Ich wollte ja wissen,
09:49wer sie war
09:50und nicht nur,
09:51dass sie dort gestorben ist.
09:52Es war am Anfang
09:54fast wie eine Detektivarbeit,
09:56weil eben fast keine Quellen
09:58da gewesen sind.
10:08Gierda Taro only carried that name for a year.
10:12She was born as Goethe Pohoril, to a Jewish family, immigrants from Galicia, an Austrian
10:18province that passed over to Poland.
10:23She grew up during the Great War, which led to the fall of the empire.
10:29Far from the political turmoil that violently scarred the young Weimar Republic, she became
10:34an elegant, cheerful young girl with a gift for foreign languages and studying business.
11:15In 1929, just as Gierda was turning 19, the economic crisis led the family to move to Leipzig, a few
11:22hundred miles away.
11:23Her father had decided to set up a new business there.
11:29She soon met a young communist, a member of the Socialist Writers' Union, who would come
11:35to exert a significant influence over her future choices.
11:38His name was Georg Koritkes.
12:08And I think it was really a horizontal, which was very important in Leipzig, in Leipzig,
12:18which was very important in Leipzig and that she also, I think, was very long and very
12:22long and very long, because it was a kind of internationalist thinking that was not only
12:29with your city or your country, but it had to do with all people.
12:38A jazz enthusiast who dances like a god.
12:41This is how Gierda described Georg in a letter to her childhood friend.
12:46It's true that he's very young, but he's damn intelligent.
12:50He has amazing eyes and he is incredibly in love with me.
12:54I'll tell you more if the Nazis don't beat me to death beforehand.
13:03This offhand sentence reflects an increasingly menacing political context for Goethe, Georg
13:09and her new Leipzig friends.
13:12Most of them were Jewish, socialist or communist.
13:19Hitler's rise to power in January 1933 intensified the crackdown on left-wing circles.
13:29On the 18th of March, Goethe Pohoril was arrested.
13:33She had been distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets.
13:37Yesterday's frivolous concerns made way for the need to protest.
13:42She was detained for two weeks.
13:45One of her fellow inmates later recounted that Goethe had arrived in their cell with a bright
13:49checkered dress, practically apologizing for it.
13:52It's just because she was going dancing when she was arrested.
13:57She added, none of us could compete with Gierda's patience, her confidence, her composure.
14:05Where they were killed?
14:07Was it is because of the force of the population?
14:08When she was arrested, she was committed to the police system.
14:10She was now on the shoulders of the Nationalsozialist Americans.
14:14She wasn't able to stay in Germany.
14:18She was going to be so strong.
14:19she has to protect herself, she has to go out of Germany.
14:24The arrest for Gerta was for sure
14:27with a clearing of the decision to leave Germany.
14:35Would things have been different
14:37had she decided to follow Georg, her Leipzig sweetheart,
14:40who chose to go in exile in Italy,
14:43if she had not chosen Paris as her refuge for a new life?
14:50The city that she came to in the autumn of 1933
14:53had a reputation of being a safe haven
14:56for German cultural and political immigrants.
15:08With one of her Leipzig friends,
15:10she settled into a former maid's room
15:12a few streets down from the Montparnasse cafés.
15:16The refugees met on terraces around cups of coffee,
15:19looking for jobs,
15:21exchanging the latest harrowing news from Germany.
15:25What could a 24-year-old young woman
15:28possibly have felt as a foreigner in a strange city?
15:31The need to feed herself.
15:33She went from selling newspapers for a while
15:36to becoming a typist.
15:37There was also a sense of freedom.
15:40She had no ties.
15:42Anything was possible.
15:56In 1934, about a year after her arrival,
16:00she met a young man on the terrace of the Café du Dôme.
16:03He was Hungarian, Jewish,
16:05and he had also fled to escape Nazism,
16:08a small camera slung around his shoulder.
16:11His name was not yet Robert Capa,
16:13but André Friedman.
16:15André Friedman actually had published his photographs
16:18before he came to Paris.
16:19He was working in Berlin in an agency there.
16:22It was in sort of an extraordinary situation
16:26where he was assigned to go photograph Trotsky.
16:28He was giving a lecture to students in Copenhagen.
16:32And, you know, typical Capa story,
16:34he smuggled in his camera and was sitting right below Trotsky
16:37and, you know, made these extraordinary photographs from below
16:40with his arms extended, you know, really, again,
16:43this very, the hallmark kind of photograph by Capa,
16:47very physical, very emotional.
16:49So he had, you know, started his career,
16:51and he clearly could see success.
16:53But it really, that was short-lived.
16:56And when he came to Paris,
16:57he really had no reputation other than a few friends
17:00that he could call on.
17:039th of September, 1935.
17:06Imagine, Mother, my hair is short,
17:08my tie is hanging on my neck,
17:10my shoes are shiny,
17:11and I appear on stage at seven o'clock.
17:14It is the end of the bohemian life.
17:16Naturally, there is a girlfriend,
17:18who would gain your acceptance also,
17:20because she is not the last cause of my regulated life.
17:2530th of September, 1935.
17:27Our money is equal to zero,
17:29but we don't starve,
17:30because what is needed for eating somehow we obtain.
17:33Girda takes pictures, and I make enlargements.
17:373rd of February, 1936.
17:40Today I moved back to Girda's.
17:42She helps me a lot,
17:43because she has good relations with all the editors,
17:45and she takes me with her everywhere.
17:498th of April, 1936.
17:51You can't imagine, Muti, the way we live.
17:54Up at seven, hustling all day,
17:56and spending the night manufacturing articles.
17:58I named Girda the ragged one.
18:01She owns fewer clothes than me,
18:02and is continually ragged one place or another.
18:12Taking pictures, writing captions,
18:15rushing from editors to agencies to sell them.
18:19The man who became Girda's partner introduced her to photography,
18:23and they experienced the reporter's job together.
18:29Was she the one to devise their new identity?
18:32Was it in order to create a space for her amongst the competition?
18:37The fact remains, that in the spring of 1936,
18:40they took on new names, simple names,
18:43that carried neither history nor homeland.
18:46He became Robert Capper.
18:48She became Girda Taro.
18:52Suche clusters to create new names
18:53for me, he says,
18:57we will not let us stop yourself,
18:59c毯 whether the Nazis
19:00and if we encounter women here in France,
19:03We can also face anti-Semitism, etc.
19:06We don't let us get small.
19:09We have an idea, we face these things
19:13and we will live our lives and our ideas.
19:22On the 14th of July 1936 in Paris,
19:26the popular front celebrated Bastille Day for the first time.
19:29Capa and Taro were amongst the crowd.
19:32Beside their friends of the time, other budding photographers
19:35such as David Seymour, also known as Shim,
19:39or Henri Cartier-Bresson, or even Fred Stein,
19:42one of Girde Taro's close peers.
19:45Capa, for his part, took the pictures that started to make him known.
19:51It seemed like if you think about the relationship,
19:54Capa was sort of a project for Taro
19:56and Capa was very willing to be the project.
19:59And, you know, Capa by himself had never really figured out
20:03the real, you know, steps to getting what he had wanted.
20:07So Taro was this, you know, incredible, important, essential force
20:12behind his success.
20:37I'm not sure how my father and Girde Taro
20:43met.
20:44I assume it was either in a cafe or in a meeting,
20:48but they were certainly friends with the same people
20:51because of their political affiliation.
20:54They both had to flee because they were both active socialists
20:59and anti-fascists.
21:01So that's really what they had in common.
21:04I don't like to handle these very often.
21:07They're so delicate.
21:10They're like 70, 80 years old.
21:16All pictures of Paris in the 30s.
21:18So it's 90, 100 years old.
21:28My father was starting to become established as a photographer
21:31and he was taking a lot of street scenes,
21:34but he was also taking a lot of portraits.
21:35And Girde asked him if her friend, Andre Friedman,
21:41could come and use their darkroom.
21:44And their darkroom was in fact their bathroom.
21:46So that was her real introduction to photography.
21:52Fred used his Leica to take pictures of Girde Taro
21:55in a few different situations.
21:58Outside at the Café du Dome, inside in their apartment,
22:02which was his studio.
22:10Here she is as a model.
22:14You know, she's posing here.
22:16This is not a refugee as you would think a refugee.
22:20You know, this is someone who's done fashion work before.
22:25And here, this is one of the funny pictures of her.
22:28You know, she's always joking around with them.
22:32I am sure of that.
22:33And my father was a joker also.
22:36So I think between the two of them, they must have had a lot of fun together.
22:41And here's one that shows her personality.
22:44She is very sure of herself.
22:46I wouldn't want to mess around with this woman.
22:49She's tough.
22:50She's got determination.
22:57Eirde Taro was a pioneer.
22:59She was an anti-fascist woman pioneer photographer.
23:04That's unique.
23:06You know, we can only learn from her and from her photographs
23:09and what she went through and her courage.
23:27Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara said of her that she didn't see the job as a mechanical and blind activity.
23:33It was a thought-out passion in service of a new humankind.
23:41Spain is an unavoidable stop for anyone retracing her footsteps.
23:44In the summer of 1936, it was Gia de Taro's trial by fire.
24:02The country that she discovered with Robert Capa in the early month of August 1936 was at war.
24:08On the 18th of July, a coup by General Franco marked the beginning of a violent clash
24:14between partisans of the military putsch and those of the Republican Popular Front.
24:23When we reached Barcelona on August 5th, the fighting was over.
24:27Shots no longer echoed in the streets.
24:30The dead had been taken away, for the people had triumphed, wrote Robert Capa.
24:38Faces were joyful in Gia de Taro's first known pictures.
24:43Barcelona had chosen its side, and so had she.
24:48Weren't the Republicans her brothers in arms?
24:50She who had fled a country plagued by Nazism.
24:58Through Capa's lens, we can see her wearing the classic overalls
25:02worn by militia women in the first months of the war.
25:13When I started my research, I had the same years as Gia de Taro when I came to Spain.
25:21So I remember that it impacted me a lot.
25:23How did a woman with my age come to Paris,
25:28exiled by the Spanish Civil War,
25:30how did a woman in Spain make pictures of the calamities that had to have had to happen?
25:34Because I had to empathize.
25:36That at that time, the public still wasn't used to the power of the image.
25:42With the images of the Spanish militias,
25:46women with guns that were in front,
25:49saying to the whole world,
25:50the whole world,
25:51in Spain, even the women are fighting for defending democracy.
25:54What do you do?
25:55You don't come to Spain to help you to stop fascism.
26:00What do you do?
26:03What do you do?
26:04Because she knows that to be able to circulate by the press,
26:08they have to be impactful images.
26:10And she seeks to create,
26:12she seeks to create that impact
26:13and if she doesn't find it,
26:15somehow she creates it.
26:17For example, in this image,
26:19with the use of the technique of the counter-light,
26:21lowering the point of view
26:23and highlighting the shoe in the face of a woman's war.
26:28This image would impact the whole world.
26:31It was a time that was very hopeful.
26:35Everything was open.
26:36Spain was a utopical place at this time.
26:40Gerta Taro made pictures,
26:42which I often call as something that is time-free.
26:46And you can see these pictures.
26:49She was influenced by the early Soviet photography,
26:54which also puts a new look at the world.
26:57And from this point,
26:58it is also very beautiful to see Taro
27:01how she has the diagonals,
27:03how she has the people in her images,
27:07and has a lot of freedom.
27:09That is the wide Spanish sky.
27:20After a few days, Taro and Capa took the road,
27:23looking for a front line which was not always clearly defined.
27:29First, it was the Aragon Front in the north,
27:32then Madrid, then Andalusia.
27:36The conflict in Spain marked a turning point in war photography.
27:40It was the first time that small, light cameras
27:43allowed photographers to get close up to the action.
27:48In the absence of fighting,
27:50Gerta Taro's camera captured farm life scenes at first,
27:54soldiers and peasants working together
27:56in a collective defense effort.
28:01On the Cordoba Front in the south,
28:04Capa and Taro finally found what they needed
28:07to take the pictures they were looking for,
28:09to stir people's consciences.
28:15A Spanish journalist who crossed their paths there
28:17wrote of their exhilarating enthusiasm.
28:22Without weapons,
28:23with not much more than a camera,
28:25they faced the most ravaged battlefields,
28:27encouraging each other mutually.
28:29They would have photographed
28:31the enemy's loaded gun barrels if they could.
28:36This is where Capa took the picture
28:38that was to become a symbol
28:39of the drama playing out in Spain,
28:42the falling soldier.
28:45Decades later,
28:46questions were raised about its authenticity.
28:53For the time being,
28:55both photographers returned to Paris,
28:57feeling that they had found their place.
29:01That first trip to Spain
29:02was incredibly successful for Capa
29:06and slightly successful for Taro.
29:08But she had gone from very little.
29:11She had gone from sort of nothing.
29:12So she became, you know,
29:13that really gave her the sense
29:15and the confidence
29:16that she could make photographs
29:17that were good for the magazines.
29:19I love to see all the things
29:49like us and not agree in the way.
30:02Look, this was the initial photo that for me made me ask me who this woman was.
30:09And it caught my attention because I knew Robert Kappa, I knew many images, but this is a photo that
30:17is a very subtle photo, it's a very casual photo, it's the typical photo that a man
30:26is enamored to his girl when he is asleep. And it also seems like a child with the short hair
30:32and the red hair of Robert Kappa. And this photo woke me up and asked me,
30:39well, who is this woman?
30:43At some point, I think, this was my feeling, that there was a debt with them,
30:50a debt because they, not only they, the truth, but also a whole generation of
30:57Europeans and Americans. When the European democracies abandoned the
31:04Spanish Republic to the feet of the horses, well, a whole generation of young people
31:12from all countries came to Spain to defend, because there was a feeling
31:22that it was not only a war between Spanish, but that it was something more,
31:27that it was an appetite, it was the first battle of the war against the fascism.
31:32So, I think there was an explicit homage to my part, to them.
31:38Robert Kappa and Gerda Taro didn't come as brigadiers,
31:43they didn't come with the arms, they came with their arms,
31:45which were the Leica, the Rolleifle, their cameras.
31:49Robert Kappa and Gerda Taro didn't have time.
32:06She didn't have time, she didn't have time.
32:08I don't have any doubt about that if she had had it,
32:11she would have been a famous photographer and so famous as Robert Kappa.
32:19But the luck, the luck, the barack, let's say,
32:23what she played against was the time, the time.
32:55Returning to Spain a few months later,
32:57Ghir de Taro found the country exhausted by a long winter of intense fighting.
33:02The military coup had led to a fratricidal war.
33:06Franco's army was actively backed by the Nazi air force and Mussolini's Italian troops.
33:12France and England had officially chosen not to intervene.
33:16On the Republican side, along with Soviet military aid,
33:20young volunteers poured in from all countries, organized into international brigades.
33:26The impression that Ghir de Taro made on one of these brigade members was that of an adorable young woman.
33:33This is how he described her arrival amongst them in his diary.
33:37She wears trousers, a beret on her beautiful strawberry blonde hair, and a small revolver.
33:44It is not hard to imagine the effect that the graceful reporter's arrival had.
33:48To welcome her, two bottles were opened.
33:51One could even hear the young girl's bright laughter from outside.
34:01Ghir de Taro and the fighters shared the same hopes, the same generosity, and often the same age.
34:08The same disillusionment also.
34:10The same pain.
34:13The same pain.
34:39They valued her talent and her courage.
34:43Some nicknamed her La Pequena Rubia, the little blonde girl.
34:47They even whispered that it brought luck to have the small reporter by their side for a few days.
35:19As the weeks went by, she often began to say,
35:22When she went to Spain alone, her love story with Robert Capa started to wither away.
35:28Perhaps there was no space for love in times of war.
35:34Their professional relationship, on the other hand, evened out.
35:38She, who was once an apprentice, became a respected partner, and her name became well-recognized in the press.
35:45It soon started to appear alone.
36:11Her gaze stood out, for it was in touch with the pain of war.
36:15Her gaze stood out, for it was in touch with the pain of war.
36:17I think, actually, the most pivotal story is the morgue story, for which she received a cover story on Regal
36:25magazine for that,
36:26and a full page with her clear and full credit.
36:28And I think it's also subject matter that really pulls her apart from Capa at that point,
36:35and does a story that he didn't do, and never did, in that kind of proximity to death.
36:43This is, I think, where Taro becomes Taro.
36:50It's a very important picture, because they're images for the time when they had never photographed the civilians,
36:58the victims of the bombardment, because they didn't have been bombarded the civilians.
37:04They are working with a 50mm very close to the face of the victims,
37:10and they are showing the death of the face, of the face, without any kind of filter or censure to
37:18say to the whole world what I'm saying.
37:21I read, I read a lot, that Gerda Taro had a female gaze, because it was special attention to women
37:29and children in their work.
37:49But the Western democracies turned a blind eye to the Spanish pain.
37:56Is this why Gia de Taro started to take increasingly greater risks?
38:04The spring of 1937 transformed her.
38:08Her signature was as sought after as that of her colleagues Capa and Shim.
38:12And yet, a few weeks later, she would pass into oblivion.
38:25Looking at her last negatives, one cannot help but wish to warn her.
38:30To not meddle in the Battle of Brunetti, the great offensive with which the Republicans hope to save Madrid from
38:36Franco's menace.
38:39To go back to Paris, where Capa awaited her to go to China, where he had obtained a contract for
38:44them both.
38:46To not wish to show the world a Republican victory at all costs, in this early month of July 1937.
38:57Here, behind us, we see the old camp of battle.
39:01With the villages, the 3-4 villages that play a big role.
39:07So it's from here that the offensive starts, the 6th of July 1937.
39:14It started very well with Brunetti.
39:17It started very well with Brunetti.
39:18After a few hours, they took Brunetti, without too much battle.
39:21And that's where Gerda Taro will play.
39:24She will make photos of this first victory, first village.
39:29That's why we call it the Battle of Brunetti.
39:31These photos will be published on July 16th at Paris.
39:35And from there, these images will represent the Republican victory.
39:40But the 16th of July, when the publication of these images of the battle,
39:45they already turn in favor of Franco.
39:49And so it will end in a drama, not only for the Republican army,
39:55but also for Gerda Taro.
40:01She takes huge risks.
40:04There is even the General Walter, the Chief of the 35th Division,
40:07which gives her the order to leave.
40:10And she says to the devil with the General,
40:13I want to make my photos, I'll stay.
40:15And so she will do these photos in a dantesque situation.
40:19And so everything is on fire, there are bombings,
40:21there is an incredible noise, there is a sound everywhere.
40:24And she will stay.
40:26She will really photograph the end of the Battle of Brunetti.
40:30And she will do it.
40:31And she will pay the strong price for that.
40:38In the general panic,
40:40she left the front line by hopping onto the running board
40:43of a car transporting the wounded.
40:47After a few miles,
40:48a Soviet tank came out of a wheat field
40:50and accidentally crashed into the car,
40:53seriously wounding Gerda Taro.
41:01There is a road where there are dozens of cars
41:05who go to work in Madrid every day.
41:08No one knows,
41:09very few people know what happened there.
41:12There is a tree that probably started to push
41:15after the Battle of Brunetti,
41:17who is the witness of her passage and his force.
41:24This solitary tree,
41:25this solitary woman,
41:27who came to cover a war,
41:30all alone,
41:31and who is convinced that it is important.
41:34She doesn't know what will happen again,
41:36she doesn't know what will happen again,
41:36she doesn't know what will happen again,
41:38but she knows that the future is black.
41:41And so it's here that we have to fight.
41:44And it's very beautiful,
41:46it's a generation,
41:47not only her,
41:48but it's a generation who really believed
41:50that a better world was possible.
42:16After her accident,
42:18Gerda Taro was taken to the British hospital
42:20in the town of El Escorial.
42:22She died there in the early hours
42:24of the 26th of July, 1937,
42:27after having asked what had become of her camera.
42:33druggamists
42:39and other monsters
42:39was about kids,
42:40that she gets hooked up to the hospital
42:42as well.
42:47Despite the future,
42:49a moment that she looks justly
42:50good,
42:52even she is sufficient to understand.
42:54as a soldier asked her finally,
42:57she's still in the戦ということで
42:59somewhere,
42:59She was destroyed on the street.
43:01The half sacral is almost like a painting-like painting.
43:08It was very touching to me.
43:17I asked myself of course, who is the photographer?
43:26Her body was repatriated to Madrid,
43:28where a wake was held in the winter garden
43:31of the alliance of anti-fascist intellectuals,
43:33the friends she had said goodbye to two days earlier.
43:37Artists and political figures paid her tributes,
43:40such as writer Leon Mussinac, who wrote,
43:43The pain we feel, we her comrades,
43:46has spread like blood.
43:48We shall not forget the harsh trace of our tears on our cheeks,
43:51nor in our eyes, Girda.
43:54The oh-so-clear message of your youth,
43:56of your courage, of your struggle.
44:08You know, over the years there have been a variety of things written about Taro,
44:12and some of which have taken a very fictitious direction,
44:17in part because we know so little about her.
44:21And the fact that she died having, you know, only worked for such a short time,
44:27there's so much potential in any direction she could have taken.
44:30I mean, people who die young are very easy to mythologize.
44:41As soon as she had gone, Girda Taro's image started to fade.
44:47Hardly any known photos remain of the funeral organized for her
44:50by the French Communist Party.
44:53No film archives showing the procession followed by thousands of people,
44:58crossing Paris towards the Père Lachaise cemetery on the 2nd of August 1937.
45:06Louis Aragon, who led the daily communist newspaper Ce Soir,
45:10that had published many of Girda Taro's pictures, later wrote,
45:14The people of Paris held an extraordinary funeral for Little Taro,
45:18and all the flowers of the world seemed to be there.
45:28It is a political demonstration.
45:31And I think it is interesting,
45:33that Ce Soir and the Communist Party
45:36Girda Taro to a modern chandard of fascism made.
45:44This picture, that was created by her,
45:47which was created by her,
45:49which was created by her,
45:49but very quickly.
45:55Who cared about the Spanish Civil War once it was over?
46:00In 1939, Franco had only just seized power through blood,
46:05but the Second World War came to erode his memory.
46:09After having photographed the exodus of Spanish Republicans
46:12fleeing their country, Robert Capa emigrated to New York
46:15to be with his mother and brother Cornell,
46:17and continued to cover the world's conflicts.
46:20He himself lost his life in Indochina in 1954.
46:28The portrait of the greatest war photographer traveled the world,
46:32and nobody remembered that it had been taken on the Segovia front
46:35by a woman named Girda Taro.
46:42It is not the responsibility of Robert Capa
46:46of how it has been taken on the olvides of Girda Taro,
46:49because in all the senses, when you start to study that work,
46:53it is always ordered by topics and not by authors.
46:56The names of photographers are dissolved.
46:59The important thing are the testimonies,
47:02not who they sign.
47:03But it is true that after, as the photojournalist evolves,
47:09the name of photographers is important.
47:12It would have been important that Girda Taro's work had been put in value.
47:16How did Girda Taro work?
47:18Taro's legacy was completely wrapped up in Capa's,
47:21because all of her family died during World War II.
47:25There was no one there to take care of it.
47:27And there was no, you know, one site or location where the work remained,
47:32but it was all spread out in diverse places.
47:35So it was, you know, as Cornell was scooping everything up,
47:39Taro was just a part of that.
47:40The Taro story was only a small chapter within the larger legacy.
47:50Would her story have ended there without the extraordinary discovery
47:55that was made 70 years after her death?
47:58On the eve of the millennium, she was no more than a shadow.
48:02At most, she was remembered as one of Robert Capa's girlfriends.
48:06But one day, a few thousand negatives from the Spanish Civil War
48:10that were believed to be lost were found by chance in Mexico
48:13with the heir of the Mexican ambassador to Vichy.
48:23They had been gathered by Robert Capa,
48:25then lost in the turmoil of the German occupation.
48:35One third of these negatives, which make up what is now known as the Mexican suitcase,
48:41are attributed to Gira Taro,
48:43thus bringing her work, which had sunk into oblivion, back to life.
48:48You can see the film goes in, the rolled film goes in in the squares on the bottom,
48:57and then the top had squares to mark the content of the corresponding film.
49:09When the news of the Mexican suitcase first appeared internationally,
49:13it became such a sensation because I think it touched on everyone's fears
49:18and everyone's hope and dreams and desires that something lost to them
49:22years later would return.
49:27When these pictures were there, we looked at these films by piece of piece of piece.
49:34And for Gerda Taro, her work was growing rapidly.
49:40There were very, very many works there,
49:43which were definitely written to her.
49:45And for Taro, we had many pictures,
49:48which were written to Kapa earlier.
49:49And that's, so to say,
49:53that's what she meant to be a pioneer of the photography of the war.
50:02One of my favorite films in the suitcase is of Taro's,
50:08of the morgue, outside the morgue in Valencia.
50:11She starts outside, in the interior of the morgue,
50:15looking out through the gates, looking at all of the people,
50:18who had come together to find out information about their families.
50:21And you can see her literally walking, pacing, like a panther, you know,
50:27looking at the faces of the people in the morgue and framing, framing,
50:32and really looking, you know, what is the best shot here.
50:35And I think at the seventh frame, she turns her camera finally vertically,
50:40and then takes one shot and then goes in closer and gets a second shot.
50:46And it's that picture that ends up in the, you know, the cover of Huggard magazine.
50:50You really see her working, you really see her struggling
50:53to figure out what is going to ring to the editors,
50:58and ring out to the ultimate readers of the magazines.
51:01And you just don't see that in a pile of prints,
51:03because you may have only that one selected image.
51:07So you have no idea what it became before or after.
51:21One day I got a call from Cynthia Young, who's a curator at the ICP.
51:28And she said, I have some interesting news for you.
51:32We just got back all of Robert Kappa's pictures,
51:38negatives, from Mexico in this thing we're calling the Mexican suitcase.
51:43And we found two rolls of Fred Stein's pictures in it.
51:49And I was stunned.
51:56I know that my father gave those negatives to Kappa.
52:01In fact, during the big funeral procession for Gerda Taro,
52:06my father saw Kappa leave the cortege.
52:09He just couldn't take the pain.
52:11It was too much for him.
52:12He couldn't stand it.
52:13My father realized just how intense his feeling
52:18and the devastation that he felt for the loss of Taro.
52:23So because of that, he offered Kappa these negatives.
52:28And I think that Kappa put these negatives of Gerda Taro
52:33together with the rest of his negatives of the Spanish Civil War,
52:37because that was a chapter in his life
52:40that he wanted to keep that chapter together.
52:54Looking at your images, the outline of your shadow haunts your negatives,
52:59just as it haunts this journey on your footsteps.
53:05For decades, your story was blended with Robert Kappa's.
53:10Eleanor Garro, the Mexican writer whose path you crossed in Spain,
53:14wrote that you were surrounded by the tragic romantic aura
53:18of young, handsome adventurers in love.
53:26How can we resist the myth?
53:27How can we grant you your rightful place in history?
53:37You know, over the years, I've read so many articles about Taro proposals,
53:42and I've been shocked and struck by the fact that they want to do a project on Gerda and Kappa.
53:49And there's this real, you know, imbalance of how they approach the people,
53:54that there's this intimacy, you know, immediate intimacy with Taro as a woman,
53:59and that they can immediately call her by her first name,
54:01where with Kappa, he's sort of the, you know, the respected man
54:05whose name you're only going to refer to by the last.
54:09It's an interesting difference in the way that we approach male historical figures
54:15and female historical figures.
54:24He had all that romantic, youth,
54:28the history, it's very novelist,
54:31but I still think about the same thing.
54:33The fundamental of this figure,
54:36the fundamental that he cost the life,
54:39that marked a before and a after,
54:41that marked a hit in the fotoperiodism,
54:43was the work.
54:53Mythen have a task,
54:55to be aware of certain topics,
54:59or something like that.
55:00But we have to look at them again and look at them,
55:04and that's also exciting as the mythos itself.
55:07To deconstruct a mythos is also very exciting.
55:18One may want to fit all the puzzle's pieces together,
55:22but we must accept that some are missing.
55:26Accept that we shall never hear your voice.
55:32And suddenly, see you appear in an archive.
55:37You were in Valencia, on the 4th of July, 1937,
55:41to cover the opening of the Writers' Congress for the Defense of Culture.
55:46While war was raging,
55:49around 200 writers from 30 countries,
55:51were there to showcase their support to the Spanish Republic's struggle,
55:54and their unwavering resistance to fascism.
56:00A Soviet filmmaker captured your silhouette.
56:04Fleeting shots filmed just before your passing.
56:28Today, undying traces of you remain.
56:34Your photographs.
56:37And a tribute paid by Leon Mussinac, who recalled.
56:41This fearfully vivid image.
56:43The sharp, charming, deliberate outline of a woman above the brunette wheat fields.
56:50A small child's fist striking the sky.
56:52While suddenly, out of the quiet, the quiet of farewell,
56:56a skylog bursts into song.
57:00And Geirda smiles.
57:04The End
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