Critic and writer John Berger and photographer Sebastião Salgado.…
Searching For Gerda Taro
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
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The woman in the black-and-white photo is bent in a lunge, one knee on the ground. She wears shoes with heels and leans forward, a hand on her back for support, looking intensely past the barrel of the revolver in her hand.
This is one of hundreds of iconic images shot by photographer Gerda Taro during the Spanish Civil War. A war she would cover for only a year before she herself would die — the first female war photographer to be killed on assignment.
SEARCHING FOR GERDA TARO celebrates the life and work of Taro — a charismatic Jewish refugee from Germany, an anti-fascist, and a trailblazing photographer whose work would be forgotten for decades.
In 1935, Taro (then going by her birth name, Gerta Pohorylle), met Endre Friedmann, a Jewish photographer from Hungary trying to make a name for himself in Paris. They fell in love and moved in together. The next year, they changed their names to Gerda Taro and Robert Capa. Capa taught Taro photography. Taro in turn helped sell his photos and build his reputation. Together, they went to Spain to report on the civil war from the front lines. She captured the heroism of Republican fighters and documented the world’s first deaths of civilians from aerial bombardment.
SEARCHING FOR GERDA TARO shares dozens of stunning archival images by and of Taro. We come to understand her life and work through conversations with curators, authors, and descendants of those who knew her. For decades, her legacy was wrapped up with Capa’s, many of her photos seemingly lost. But with the discovery of thousands of her negatives in the mid-1990s, Taro can finally enjoy the credit she deserves as a brilliant photographer in her own right.
“Shines a new light on her role as a war photographer and artist.” —Barcelona Metropolitan
“This documentary is as fascinating in substance as it is elegant in form.” —Le Monde
“Recommended for courses in Spanish history, photography, and journalism.” —Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)
“Editor's Pick! Anyone studying photojournalism or women in photography will want to see Searching for Gerda Taro.” —Video Librarian
Citation
Main credits
Ménager, Camille (film director)
François, Emmanuel (film producer)
Mansion, Alice (film producer)
Delebarre, Lionel (editor of moving image work)
Delavigne, Thibault (director of photography)
Rotzinger, Lou (composer)
Other credits
Cinematography, Thibault Delavigne; editor, Lionel Delebarre; music, Lou Rotzinger.
Distributor subjects
Photography; Politics; war; Jewish StudiesKeywords
WEBVTT
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[sheep bleating]
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I was looking through this box of old family photographs,
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and I came across this one,
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This I could recognize immediately was my father,
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when he was very young,
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27, 28 years old in the Spanish Civil War.
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And here he is a picture of him treating this very ill
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patient, obviously female.
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And there\'s a certain tenderness about this photograph.
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And the fact, the expression on my father\'s face
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suddenly made me very proud of him
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and what he was doing in the Spanish civil war.
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And I didn\'t know who the patient was or the circumstances,
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but I thought I want to share this.
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So I put it on Twitter, and then over the next few days,
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there were a number of replies on Twitter,
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including one saying,
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\"Could you please give us more details of this picture?
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Where was it?
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Who was the patient?\"
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And I didn\'t know anything more about it.
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But I then looked on the back and here in my father\'s,
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rather bad writing that says,
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I think Front de Brunete Jr 37.
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Then it says, Mrs. Franck Capa of ce soir of Paris
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killed at Brunete.
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A day or two later, somebody replied saying,
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I think you\'re talking here about Gerda Taro.
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And now I didn\'t know who Gerda Taro was at all.
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And then the Twitter went viral.
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My father didn\'t talk a lot about the Spanish Civil War.
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In fact, I learned more about how he came to be there
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and what he was doing there from an interview,
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an oral tape interview that he gave back in 1992,
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which was fascinating.
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that you can give about the Brunete days.
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was extra interest to me that we had a wounded woman
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more or less dead when she came into my hands,
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I found out much later that she was wife
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of the famous war photographer, Robert Capa.
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She was not in the army,
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she was the reporter newspaper woman.
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But I did not, not a clue who she was when I,
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somebody took a picture of me cleaning her up,
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the blood from her face, but I did not know who she was.
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[gentle music]
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that\'s the name you chose for yourself
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back when photojournalism was being invented.
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You took pictures of the Spanish republics
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desperate struggle.
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You were creating pioneering work,
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but you lost your life to the misery of war
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just before your 27th birthday.
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For many years, you sank into oblivion,
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and yet you\'ll picture speak to the roots
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of our shed history, the madness of men, the pain of war,
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but also the ideal of brotherhood
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and hope for a better world.
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Your mythical story deserves to be told,
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your pictures should be dug up.
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For that, we must go on a journey that mingles the present
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and the past.
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[horn whistling]
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We could begin the story in the late summer of 1937,
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Robert Capa, who Time Magazine would come to crown
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as one of the greatest photographers of all time
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was on a boat to New York.
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He owed his reputation, takes pictures
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of the Spanish Civil War, which was still raging
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when he crossed the Atlantic ocean.
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He had not been alone, he had taken up arms
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as a war reporter alongside Gerda Taro.
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As a tribute to the woman he had also deeply loved,
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he published a book of their pictures together
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dedicated to her.
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\"For Gerda Taro who spent one year at the Spanish front
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and who stayed on.\"
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Little did he know that was the last time
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that Gerda Taro\'s pictures would brought to light.
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[ship horn honking]
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For nearly half a century,
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they were indiscriminately mingled with those
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of her famous partner.
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We must follow his footsteps to find them once more.
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Gerda Taro never went to New York,
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yet that is where her works legacy lies,
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at the International Center of Photography,
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created in 1974 by Cornell Capa, Robert Capa\'s brother.
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He wanted to conserve the archives of activist
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photographers, of lost photographers,
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whose pictures aim to change the world.
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I think is what she brings to each image.
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She was very passionately engaged with the publican cause.
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And I think that engagement is reflected
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in every single one of her images.
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Taro was not sort of objective fair and balanced reporter,
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she was highly partisan and she was making prints
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and images to support the Republican side.
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She was gonna go right up to the front lines.
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I mean, she wasn\'t gonna sit back and photograph babies
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and children and happy subject.
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She was really gonna go in deep and to show
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the kind of real casualty that she was seeing in Spain.
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And I think very image images absolutely reflect that
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broader engagement with war photography.
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[gentle music]
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She died, and her career was not even a year.
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And in fact, as a photographer at all,
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which is quite extraordinary that she\'s so quickly
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picked up the camera and immediately knew how to use it
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and to make effective strong graphic images.
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that she carried within her, the genie of Madrid
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made of a woman smile and the heart of a hero.
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Was it heroism?
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Where do the sense of agency,
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which led to risk her life 2000 kilometers away
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from her birth town come from?
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Maybe we can find the reasons for his Spanish engagement
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in Germany.
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In Stuttgart, the town where she was born
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on the 5th of August, 1910 in what was then still called
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the German Empire.
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[Irme speaking German]
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[soft music]
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She was born as Gerta Pohorylle to a Jewish family,
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immigrants from Galicia and Austrian province
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that passed over to Poland.
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She grew up during the great war,
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which led to the fall of the empire.
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Far from the political turmoil
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that violently scarred the young Weimar Republic.
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She became an elegant cheerful young girl
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with a gift for foreign languages and studying business.
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[Irme speaking German]
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the economic crisis led the family to move to Leipzig
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a few hundred miles away.
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Her father had decided to set up a new business there.
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She soon met a young communist,
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a member of the Socialist Writers Union
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who would come to exert a significant influence
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over her future choices.
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His name was Georg Kuritzkes.
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[Irme speaking German]
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this is how Gerda I described Georg in a letter
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to her childhood friend.
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\"It\'s true that he\'s very young, but he\'s intelligent.
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He has amazing eyes, and he is incredibly in love with me.
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I\'ll tell you more if the Nazis don\'t beat me to death
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beforehand.\"
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[piano trills]
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This offhand sentence reflects an increasingly
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menacing political context for Gerda, Georg
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and her new Leipzig friends.
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Most of them were Jewish socialist or communist.
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Hitler\'s rise to power in January, 1933,
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intensify the crackdown on left-wing circles.
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On the 18th of March Gerta Pohorylle was arrested.
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She had been distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets.
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Yesterday\'s frivolous concerns
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made way for the need to protest.
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She was detained for two weeks.
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One of her fellow inmates later recounted that Gerta
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had arrived in their cell with a bright checkered dress,
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practically apologizing for it.
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It\'s just because she was going dancing
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when she was arrested.
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She added, \"none of us could compete with Gerda\'s patients,
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her confidence, her composure.\"
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[Irme speaking German]
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had she decided to follow Georg, her Leipzig sweetheart,
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who chose to go in exile in Italy?
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If she had not chosen Paris as her refuge for a new life.
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The city that she came to in the autumn of 1933,
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had a reputation of being a safe haven
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for German cultural and political immigrants.
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With one of her Leipzig friends,
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she settled into a former mates room,
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a few streets down from the Montparnasse cafes.
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The refugees met on terraces around cups of coffee,
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looking for jobs, exchanging the latest harrowing news
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from Germany.
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What could a 24 year old young woman possibly have felt
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as a foreigner in a strange city?
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The need to feed herself.
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She went from selling newspapers for awhile
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to becoming a typist.
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There was also a sense of freedom, she had no ties,
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anything was possible.
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In 1930 for about a year after her arrival,
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she met a young man on the terrace of the Café du Dôme.
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He was Hungarian Jewish, and he had also fled
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to escape Nazi-ism,
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a small camera slung around his shoulder.
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His name was not yet Robert Capa, but Andre Friedman.
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before he came to Paris.
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He was working in Berlin in an agency there.
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It was in sort of an extraordinary situation
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where he was assigned to go photograph Trotsky
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was giving a lecture to students in Copenhagen.
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And typical Capa story he smuggled in his camera
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and was sitting right below Trotsky
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and made these extraordinary photographs from below
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with his arms extended.
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Really again, this the very,
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the hallmark kind of photograph by Capa, very physical,
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very emotional.
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So he had started his career
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and he clearly could see success,
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but it really, that was short lived.
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And when he came to Paris,
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he really had no reputation
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other than a few friends that he could call on.
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\"Imagine mother, my hair is short.
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My ties hanging on my neck.
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My shoes are shiny and I appear on stage at seven o\'clock.
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It is the end of the Bohemian life.
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Naturally there is a girlfriend
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who would gain your acceptance also
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because she is not the last cause of my regulated life.\"
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30th of September, 1935.
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\"Our money is equal to zero,
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but we don\'t starve because what is needed for eating
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somehow we obtain.\"
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Gerda takes pictures and I make in lodgements.\"
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3rd of February, 1996,
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\"Today, I moved back to Gerda\'s,
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she helps me a lot because she has good relations
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with all the editors, and she takes me with her everywhere.\"
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8th of April, 1936,
242
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\"You can\'t imagine the way we live,
243
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up at seven hustling all day
244
00:17:56.490 --> 00:17:59.220
and spending the night manufacturing articles.
245
00:17:59.220 --> 00:18:01.350
I named Gerda, the racket one,
246
00:18:01.350 --> 00:18:03.070
she owns fewer clothes than me
247
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and it\'s continually ragged one place or another.
248
00:18:06.582 --> 00:18:08.999
[soft music]
249
00:18:13.180 --> 00:18:16.090
Taking pictures, writing captions,
250
00:18:16.090 --> 00:18:18.693
rushing from editors to agencies to sell them.
251
00:18:19.920 --> 00:18:22.670
The men who became Gerda\'s partner introduced her
252
00:18:22.670 --> 00:18:24.740
to photography and they experienced
253
00:18:24.740 --> 00:18:26.257
the reporter\'s job together.\"
254
00:18:29.490 --> 00:18:32.183
Was she the one to devise their new identity?
255
00:18:33.300 --> 00:18:35.360
Was it in order to create a space for her
256
00:18:35.360 --> 00:18:36.693
amongst the competition?
257
00:18:37.600 --> 00:18:41.000
The fact remains that in the spring of 1936,
258
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they took on new names,
259
00:18:42.640 --> 00:18:46.940
simple names that carried me the history, nor homeland.
260
00:18:46.940 --> 00:18:50.253
He became Robert Capa, she became Gerda Taro.
261
00:18:53.349 --> 00:18:56.599 line:15%
[Irme speaking German]
262
00:19:17.965 --> 00:19:20.715
[crowd chanting]
263
00:19:23.725 --> 00:19:26.800
264
00:19:26.800 --> 00:19:29.200
The popular front celebrated Bastille Day
265
00:19:29.200 --> 00:19:30.730
for the first time.
266
00:19:30.730 --> 00:19:33.000
Capa and Taro were amongst the crowd
267
00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:34.800
beside theor friends of the time,
268
00:19:34.800 --> 00:19:37.630
other budding photographers, such as David Seymour
269
00:19:37.630 --> 00:19:40.890
also known as Chim or Henri Cartier-Bresson
270
00:19:40.890 --> 00:19:44.323
or even Fred Stein, one of Gerda Taro close peers.
271
00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:48.100
Capa for his part took the pictures
272
00:19:48.100 --> 00:19:49.823
that started to make him known.
273
00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:55.030
274
00:19:55.030 --> 00:19:56.960
Capa was sort of a project for Taro,
275
00:19:56.960 --> 00:19:59.740
and Capa was very willing to be the project.
276
00:19:59.740 --> 00:20:04.740
And, Capa by himself had never really figured out the real
277
00:20:05.380 --> 00:20:07.570
steps to getting what he had wanted.
278
00:20:07.570 --> 00:20:11.550
So Taro was this, you know, incredible, important,
279
00:20:11.550 --> 00:20:15.202
essential force behind his success.
280
00:20:15.202 --> 00:20:17.619
[soft music]
281
00:20:39.010 --> 00:20:43.887 line:15%
282
00:20:45.220 --> 00:20:48.750
I assume it was either in a cafe or in a meeting,
283
00:20:48.750 --> 00:20:51.850
but they were certainly friends with the same people
284
00:20:51.850 --> 00:20:55.150
because of their political affiliation.
285
00:20:55.150 --> 00:20:58.960
They both had to flee because they were both active
286
00:20:58.960 --> 00:21:02.330
socialists and anti-fascists.
287
00:21:02.330 --> 00:21:04.380
So that\'s really what they had in common.
288
00:21:05.490 --> 00:21:07.650
I don\'t like to handle these very often,
289
00:21:07.650 --> 00:21:12.633
they\'re so delicate, they\'re like 70, 80 years old.
290
00:21:16.760 --> 00:21:19.850
All pictures of Paris in the thirties.
291
00:21:19.850 --> 00:21:24.850
So it\'s 90, 100 years old.
292
00:21:28.690 --> 00:21:30.780
My father was starting to become established
293
00:21:30.780 --> 00:21:34.100
as a photographer and he was taking a lot of street scenes,
294
00:21:34.100 --> 00:21:36.640
but he was also taking a lot of portraits.
295
00:21:36.640 --> 00:21:41.640
And Gerda asked him if her friend Andre Friedman
296
00:21:41.820 --> 00:21:44.580
could come and use their dark room.
297
00:21:44.580 --> 00:21:47.170
And their darkroom was in fact their bathroom.
298
00:21:47.170 --> 00:21:51.563
So that was her real introduction to photography.
299
00:21:52.800 --> 00:21:56.260
Fried used his Leica to take pictures of Gerda Taro
300
00:21:56.260 --> 00:21:58.380
in a few different situations,
301
00:21:58.380 --> 00:22:00.620
outside at the Cafe de Dome,
302
00:22:00.620 --> 00:22:04.083
inside in their apartment, which was his studio.
303
00:22:10.520 --> 00:22:15.520
Here she is as a model, she\'s posing here.
304
00:22:17.718 --> 00:22:20.653
This is not a refugee, as you would think a refugee.
305
00:22:22.310 --> 00:22:25.900
This is someone who\'s done fashion work before.
306
00:22:25.900 --> 00:22:28.913
And here, this is one of the funny pictures of her.
307
00:22:30.330 --> 00:22:33.607
She\'s always joking around with them, I am sure of that.
308
00:22:33.607 --> 00:22:36.819
And my father was a joker also.
309
00:22:36.819 --> 00:22:39.690
So I think between the two of them,
310
00:22:39.690 --> 00:22:42.060
they must\'ve had a lot of fun together.
311
00:22:42.060 --> 00:22:44.860
And here\'s one that shows her personality.
312
00:22:44.860 --> 00:22:46.730
She is very sure of herself.
313
00:22:46.730 --> 00:22:49.290
I wouldn\'t want to mess around with this woman.
314
00:22:49.290 --> 00:22:50.450
She\'s tough.
315
00:22:50.450 --> 00:22:52.243
She\'s got determination.
316
00:22:57.510 --> 00:22:59.600
Gerda Taro was a pioneer.
317
00:22:59.600 --> 00:23:04.600
She was an anti-fascist woman, pioneer photographer.
318
00:23:05.140 --> 00:23:06.220
That\'s unique.
319
00:23:06.220 --> 00:23:07.860
You know, we can only learn from her
320
00:23:07.860 --> 00:23:11.420
and from her photographs and what she went through
321
00:23:11.420 --> 00:23:12.683
and her courage.
322
00:23:28.175 --> 00:23:31.080
323
00:23:31.080 --> 00:23:34.760
she didn\'t see the job as a mechanical and blind activity.
324
00:23:34.760 --> 00:23:38.053
It was a thought-out passion in service of a new humankind.
325
00:23:41.430 --> 00:23:43.820
Spain is an unavoidable stop for anyone
326
00:23:43.820 --> 00:23:45.580
retracing her footsteps.
327
00:23:45.580 --> 00:23:47.750
In the summer of 1936,
328
00:23:47.750 --> 00:23:50.053
it was Gerda Taro\'s trial by fire.
329
00:23:52.602 --> 00:23:55.269
[crowd singing]
330
00:24:03.040 --> 00:24:05.480
The country that she discovered with Robert Capa
331
00:24:05.480 --> 00:24:09.330
in the early months of August, 1936 was at war.
332
00:24:09.330 --> 00:24:12.320
On the 18th of July, a coup by General Franco
333
00:24:12.320 --> 00:24:14.400
marked the beginning of a violent clash
334
00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:16.740
between partisans of the military push
335
00:24:16.740 --> 00:24:18.840
and those of the Republican popular front.
336
00:24:20.158 --> 00:24:23.757
[indistinct chatters]
337
00:24:23.757 --> 00:24:26.480
\"When we reached Barcelona on August the 5th,
338
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the fighting was over.
339
00:24:28.030 --> 00:24:30.560
Shots no longer echoed in the streets.
340
00:24:30.560 --> 00:24:34.010
The dead had been taken away for the people had triumphed,\"
341
00:24:34.010 --> 00:24:35.113
wrote Robert Capa.
342
00:24:39.050 --> 00:24:42.433
Faces with joyful in Gerda Taro\'s first known pictures.
343
00:24:43.930 --> 00:24:47.023
Barcelona had chosen its side, and so had she.
344
00:24:48.440 --> 00:24:50.900
Once the Republicans, her brothers in arms,
345
00:24:50.900 --> 00:24:53.340
she who had fled a country plagued by Nazi-ism
346
00:24:58.440 --> 00:24:59.760
Through Capa\'s lens,
347
00:24:59.760 --> 00:25:02.100
we can see how wearing the classic overalls
348
00:25:02.100 --> 00:25:04.750
worn by militia women in the first months of the war.
349
00:25:14.746 --> 00:25:18.163 line:15%
[Lorna speaking Spanish]
350
00:26:33.736 --> 00:26:36.986 line:15%
[Irme speaking German]
351
00:27:13.868 --> 00:27:16.618
[acoustic music]
352
00:27:20.470 --> 00:27:22.000
353
00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:25.080
Taro and Capa took the road looking for a frontline,
354
00:27:25.080 --> 00:27:27.093
which was not always clearly to find.
355
00:27:30.040 --> 00:27:32.760
First it was the arrogant front in the north.
356
00:27:32.760 --> 00:27:35.173
Then Madrid, then Lucia.
357
00:27:36.780 --> 00:27:39.010
The conflict in Spain marked a turning point
358
00:27:39.010 --> 00:27:40.440
in war photography.
359
00:27:40.440 --> 00:27:43.670
It was the first time that small light cameras
360
00:27:43.670 --> 00:27:46.270
allowed photographers to get close up to the action.
361
00:27:49.050 --> 00:27:50.700
In the absence of fighting,
362
00:27:50.700 --> 00:27:54.200
Gerda Taro\'s camera captured farm life scenes at first,
363
00:27:54.200 --> 00:27:56.300
soldiers and peasants working together
364
00:27:56.300 --> 00:27:57.883
in a collective defense effort.
365
00:28:02.320 --> 00:28:04.890
On the Cordoba front in the south,
366
00:28:04.890 --> 00:28:07.600
Capa and Taro finally found what they needed
367
00:28:07.600 --> 00:28:09.650
to take the pictures they were looking for
368
00:28:09.650 --> 00:28:11.463
to stop people\'s consciences.
369
00:28:13.386 --> 00:28:15.760
[bombs exploding]
370
00:28:15.760 --> 00:28:18.370
A Spanish journalist who crossed their paths there
371
00:28:18.370 --> 00:28:20.513
wrote a very exhilarating enthusiasm.
372
00:28:22.520 --> 00:28:25.480
Without weapons was not much more than a camera,
373
00:28:25.480 --> 00:28:28.000
they face the most ravaged battlefields
374
00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:30.160
encouraging each other mutually.
375
00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:31.640
They would have photographed the enemies
376
00:28:31.640 --> 00:28:33.393
loaded gun barrels if they could.
377
00:28:35.335 --> 00:28:37.180
[guns shooting]
378
00:28:37.180 --> 00:28:38.750
This is where Capa took the picture
379
00:28:38.750 --> 00:28:41.230
that was to become a symbol of the drama playing out
380
00:28:41.230 --> 00:28:43.667
in Spain, \"The Falling Soldier.\"
381
00:28:45.720 --> 00:28:49.373
Decades later questions were raised about its authenticity.
382
00:28:54.010 --> 00:28:57.620
For the time being both photographers returned to Paris,
383
00:28:57.620 --> 00:28:59.623
feeling that they had found their place.
384
00:29:01.650 --> 00:29:05.390 line:15%
385
00:29:05.390 --> 00:29:09.060 line:15%
for Capa and slightly successful for Taro.
386
00:29:09.060 --> 00:29:11.080
But she had gone from very little,
387
00:29:11.080 --> 00:29:12.430
she\'d gone from sort of nothing.
388
00:29:12.430 --> 00:29:15.680
So she became, that really gave her the sense
389
00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:18.020
and the confidence that she could make photographs
390
00:29:18.020 --> 00:29:20.317
that were good for the magazines.
391
00:29:31.060 --> 00:29:36.060 line:15%
[rain pouring]
[wind blowing]
392
00:30:04.097 --> 00:30:07.680 line:15%
[Suzzana speaking Spanish]
393
00:32:36.863 --> 00:32:39.696
[bombs exploding]
394
00:32:55.983 --> 00:32:58.030
395
00:32:58.030 --> 00:33:00.300
Gerda Taro found the country exhausted
396
00:33:00.300 --> 00:33:02.780
by a long winter of intense fighting.
397
00:33:02.780 --> 00:33:06.520
The military coup had led to a fratricidal war.
398
00:33:06.520 --> 00:33:08.490
Franco\'s army was actively backed
399
00:33:08.490 --> 00:33:11.293
by the Nazi air force and Mussolini\'s Italian troops.
400
00:33:12.540 --> 00:33:15.440
France and England had officially chosen not to intervene.
401
00:33:17.430 --> 00:33:20.900
On the Republican side, along with Soviet military aid,
402
00:33:20.900 --> 00:33:23.830
young volunteers poured in from all countries
403
00:33:23.830 --> 00:33:26.123
organized into international brigades.
404
00:33:27.090 --> 00:33:29.010
The impression that Gerda Taro made
405
00:33:29.010 --> 00:33:31.020
on one of these brigade members was that
406
00:33:31.020 --> 00:33:32.803
of an adorable young woman.
407
00:33:33.870 --> 00:33:36.250
This is how he described her arrival amongst them
408
00:33:36.250 --> 00:33:37.163
in his diary.
409
00:33:38.037 --> 00:33:39.710
\"She wears trousers,
410
00:33:39.710 --> 00:33:42.480
a baret on her beautiful strawberry blonde hair
411
00:33:42.480 --> 00:33:44.460
and a small revolver.
412
00:33:44.460 --> 00:33:46.300
It is not hard to imagine the effect
413
00:33:46.300 --> 00:33:48.960
that the graceful reporter\'s arrival had.
414
00:33:48.960 --> 00:33:52.050
To welcome her two bottles were opened.
415
00:33:52.050 --> 00:33:54.350
One could even hear the young girl\'s bright laughter
416
00:33:54.350 --> 00:33:55.307
from outside.\"
417
00:34:01.800 --> 00:34:04.750
Gerda Taro and the fighters shared the same hopes,
418
00:34:04.750 --> 00:34:07.703
the same generosity, and often the same age.
419
00:34:08.720 --> 00:34:12.150
The same disillusionment also, the same pain
420
00:34:40.350 --> 00:34:43.400
They valued her talent and her courage.
421
00:34:43.400 --> 00:34:47.193
Some nicknamed her Pequenia Rubia, the little blonde girl.
422
00:34:48.050 --> 00:34:49.740
They even whispered that had brought luck
423
00:34:49.740 --> 00:34:52.540
to have the small reporter by their side for a few days.
424
00:34:55.192 --> 00:34:58.775 line:15%
[Suzzana speaking Spanish]
425
00:35:20.200 --> 00:35:21.780
426
00:35:21.780 --> 00:35:24.040
she often went to Spain alone.
427
00:35:24.040 --> 00:35:26.933
Her love story with Robert Capa started to wither away.
428
00:35:29.160 --> 00:35:31.760
Perhaps there was no space for love in times of war.
429
00:35:34.870 --> 00:35:39.020
Their professional relationship on the other even doubt,
430
00:35:39.020 --> 00:35:42.900
she who was once an apprentice became a respected partner
431
00:35:42.900 --> 00:35:45.350
and her name became well-recognized in the press.
432
00:35:46.230 --> 00:35:48.153
It soon started to appear alone.
433
00:35:53.329 --> 00:35:57.746
[reporter speaking foreign language]
434
00:36:11.620 --> 00:36:13.110
Her gaze stood out
435
00:36:13.110 --> 00:36:15.160
for it was in touch with the pain of war.
436
00:36:18.320 --> 00:36:21.030
437
00:36:21.030 --> 00:36:22.890
is the morgue story.
438
00:36:22.890 --> 00:36:26.210
For which she received a cover story on magazine
439
00:36:26.210 --> 00:36:29.160
for that and a full page with her clear and full credit.
440
00:36:29.160 --> 00:36:32.970
And I think it\'s also subject matter that really
441
00:36:32.970 --> 00:36:35.440
pulls her apart from Capa at that point,
442
00:36:35.440 --> 00:36:39.320
and does a story that he didn\'t do and never did
443
00:36:40.360 --> 00:36:42.363
in that kind of proximity to death.
444
00:36:43.800 --> 00:36:46.493
This is I think, where Taro becomes Taro.
445
00:36:52.108 --> 00:36:55.525 line:15%
[Lorna speaking Spanish]
446
00:37:44.477 --> 00:37:46.894
[soft music]
447
00:37:49.740 --> 00:37:51.170
448
00:37:51.170 --> 00:37:53.293
turned a blind eye to the Spanish pain.
449
00:37:57.000 --> 00:37:59.760
Is this why Gerda Taro started to take increasingly
450
00:37:59.760 --> 00:38:00.773
greater risks?
451
00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:08.307
The spring of 1937 transformed her,
452
00:38:08.307 --> 00:38:10.420
her signature was as sought after,
453
00:38:10.420 --> 00:38:13.330
as that of her colleagues Capa and Chim.
454
00:38:13.330 --> 00:38:17.643
And yet a few weeks later, she would pass into oblivion.
455
00:38:26.120 --> 00:38:27.970
Looking at her last negatives,
456
00:38:27.970 --> 00:38:30.760
one cannot help, but wish to warn her
457
00:38:30.760 --> 00:38:33.030
to not meddle in the battle of Brunete.
458
00:38:33.030 --> 00:38:35.100
The great offensive with which the Republicans
459
00:38:35.100 --> 00:38:37.483
hope to save Madrid from Franco\'s menace.
460
00:38:39.450 --> 00:38:43.540
To go back to Paris, my Capa awaited her to go to China,
461
00:38:43.540 --> 00:38:45.890
where he had obtained a contract for them both.
462
00:38:46.810 --> 00:38:49.480
To not wish to show the world a Republican victory
463
00:38:49.480 --> 00:38:52.613
at all costs in this early month of July, 1937.
464
00:38:58.294 --> 00:39:01.544 line:15%
[Sven speaking French]
465
00:39:58.833 --> 00:40:01.666
[bombs exploding]
466
00:40:02.693 --> 00:40:05.943 line:15%
[Sven speaking French]
467
00:40:39.290 --> 00:40:40.840
468
00:40:40.840 --> 00:40:43.510
she left the frontline by hopping onto the running board
469
00:40:43.510 --> 00:40:45.253
of a car transporting the wounded.
470
00:40:47.470 --> 00:40:51.250
After a few miles, a Soviet tank came out of a wheat field
471
00:40:51.250 --> 00:40:53.480
and accidentally crashed into the car.
472
00:40:53.480 --> 00:40:55.563
Seriously wounding Gerda Taro.
473
00:41:02.533 --> 00:41:05.783 line:15%
[Sven speaking French]
474
00:42:00.504 --> 00:42:03.087
[somber music]
475
00:42:17.110 --> 00:42:19.250
476
00:42:19.250 --> 00:42:20.910
was taken to the British hospital
477
00:42:20.910 --> 00:42:22.410
in the town of Ellis Correale.
478
00:42:23.250 --> 00:42:27.770
She died that in the early hours of the 26th of July, 1937,
479
00:42:27.770 --> 00:42:30.553
after having asked what had become her camera.
480
00:42:39.346 --> 00:42:42.596 line:15%
[Irme speaking German]
481
00:43:27.010 --> 00:43:29.450
482
00:43:29.450 --> 00:43:31.490
where awake was held in the winter garden
483
00:43:31.490 --> 00:43:34.260
of the Alliance of anti-fascist intellectuals,
484
00:43:34.260 --> 00:43:36.910
the friends she had said goodbye to two days earlier.
485
00:43:37.760 --> 00:43:40.620
Artists and political figures paid her tributes,
486
00:43:40.620 --> 00:43:43.717
such as writer, Léon Moussinac, who wrote
487
00:43:43.717 --> 00:43:48.530
\"The pain we feel we here comrades has spread like blood.
488
00:43:48.530 --> 00:43:50.950
We shall not forget the harsh trace of our tears
489
00:43:50.950 --> 00:43:53.563
on our cheeks, nor in our eyes Gerda.
490
00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:58.380
The, oh, so clear message of your youth, of your courage,
491
00:43:58.380 --> 00:43:59.367
of your struggle.\"
492
00:44:09.200 --> 00:44:10.700
493
00:44:10.700 --> 00:44:13.080
a variety of things written about Taro,
494
00:44:13.080 --> 00:44:18.080 line:15%
and some of which have taken a very fictitious direction,
495
00:44:18.450 --> 00:44:22.008 line:15%
in part, because we know so little about her,
496
00:44:22.008 --> 00:44:25.150
and that the fact that she died having
497
00:44:25.150 --> 00:44:27.050
only worked for such a short time,
498
00:44:27.050 --> 00:44:29.770
there\'s so much potential in any direction
499
00:44:29.770 --> 00:44:30.603
she could have taken.
500
00:44:30.603 --> 00:44:33.943
I mean, people who die young are very easy to mythologize.
501
00:44:42.270 --> 00:44:44.660
502
00:44:44.660 --> 00:44:46.003
image started to fade.
503
00:44:47.220 --> 00:44:50.120
Hardly any known photos remain of the funeral
504
00:44:50.120 --> 00:44:52.663
organized for her by the French communist party.
505
00:44:53.820 --> 00:44:55.910
No film archives showing the procession
506
00:44:55.910 --> 00:44:57.683
followed by thousands of people,
507
00:44:58.970 --> 00:45:01.370
crossing Paris towards the Father Lachaise cemetery
508
00:45:01.370 --> 00:45:03.403
on the 2nd of August, 1937.
509
00:45:07.080 --> 00:45:10.230
Louis Aragon, who led the daily communist newspapers
510
00:45:10.230 --> 00:45:13.930
Ce Soir that had published many of Gerda Taro\'s pictures
511
00:45:13.930 --> 00:45:16.700
later wrote, \"The people of Paris held
512
00:45:16.700 --> 00:45:19.250
an extraordinary funeral for little Taro,
513
00:45:19.250 --> 00:45:21.900
and all the flowers of the world seemed to be there.\"
514
00:45:29.405 --> 00:45:32.655 line:15%
[Irme speaking German]
515
00:45:53.906 --> 00:45:56.525
[soft music]
516
00:45:56.525 --> 00:45:57.750
517
00:45:57.750 --> 00:45:58.973
once it was over?
518
00:46:00.950 --> 00:46:05.770
In 1939, Franco had only just seized power through blood.
519
00:46:05.770 --> 00:46:08.303
But the second world war came to erode his memory.
520
00:46:09.420 --> 00:46:11.160
After having photographed the Exodus
521
00:46:11.160 --> 00:46:13.910
of Spanish Republicans fleeing their country,
522
00:46:13.910 --> 00:46:15.850
Robert Capa immigrated to New York
523
00:46:15.850 --> 00:46:18.140
to be with his mother and brother Cornell
524
00:46:18.140 --> 00:46:21.010
and continued to cover the world\'s conflict.
525
00:46:21.010 --> 00:46:24.383
He himself lost his life in Indo-China in 1954.
526
00:46:29.090 --> 00:46:31.300
The portrait of the greatest war photographer
527
00:46:31.300 --> 00:46:32.930
traveled the world,
528
00:46:32.930 --> 00:46:34.920
and nobody remembered that it had been taken
529
00:46:34.920 --> 00:46:38.653
on the Segovia front by a woman named Gerda Taro.
530
00:46:43.319 --> 00:46:46.736 line:15%
[Lorna speaking Spanish]
531
00:47:18.090 --> 00:47:21.690
532
00:47:21.690 --> 00:47:25.540
because all of her family died during world war II.
533
00:47:25.540 --> 00:47:27.460
There was no one there to take care of it.
534
00:47:27.460 --> 00:47:31.010
And there was no one site or location
535
00:47:31.010 --> 00:47:33.010
where the work were remained,
536
00:47:33.010 --> 00:47:35.190
but it was all spread out in diverse places.
537
00:47:35.190 --> 00:47:39.250
So it was, as Cornell was scooping everything up,
538
00:47:39.250 --> 00:47:41.520
Taro was just a part of that.
539
00:47:41.520 --> 00:47:43.650
Taro story was only a small chapter
540
00:47:43.650 --> 00:47:45.903
within the larger legacy.
541
00:47:51.230 --> 00:47:53.270
542
00:47:53.270 --> 00:47:55.200
without the extraordinary discovery
543
00:47:55.200 --> 00:47:57.943
that was made 70 years after her death.
544
00:47:59.010 --> 00:48:00.630
On the Eve of the millennium,
545
00:48:00.630 --> 00:48:02.550
she was no more than a shadow,
546
00:48:02.550 --> 00:48:04.480
at most she was remembered as one of
547
00:48:04.480 --> 00:48:06.700
Robert Capa\'s girlfriends.
548
00:48:06.700 --> 00:48:09.220
But one day, a few thousand negatives
549
00:48:09.220 --> 00:48:12.140
from the Spanish Civil War that were believed to be lost
550
00:48:12.140 --> 00:48:14.320
were found by chance in Mexico,
551
00:48:14.320 --> 00:48:16.953
with the heir of the Mexican ambassador to Vichy.
552
00:48:24.010 --> 00:48:26.130
They had been gathered by Robert Capa
553
00:48:26.130 --> 00:48:28.863
then lost at the turmoil of the German occupation.
554
00:48:36.150 --> 00:48:38.040
One third of these negatives,
555
00:48:38.040 --> 00:48:41.390
which make up what is now known as the Mexican suitcase
556
00:48:41.390 --> 00:48:43.470
are attributed to Gerda Taro.
557
00:48:43.470 --> 00:48:46.740
thus bringing her work which had sunk into oblivion
558
00:48:46.740 --> 00:48:47.703
back to life.
559
00:48:49.470 --> 00:48:53.760
560
00:48:53.760 --> 00:48:57.290
the rolled film goes in and the squares on the bottom.
561
00:48:57.290 --> 00:49:02.290
And then the top had squares to mark the content
562
00:49:03.960 --> 00:49:05.833
of the corresponding film.
563
00:49:10.130 --> 00:49:12.920
When the news, the Mexican suitcase first appeared
564
00:49:12.920 --> 00:49:15.500
internationally, it became such an sensation
565
00:49:15.500 --> 00:49:18.800
because I think it touched on everyone\'s fears
566
00:49:18.800 --> 00:49:21.610
and everyone\'s hope and dreams and desires
567
00:49:21.610 --> 00:49:24.743
that something lost to them years later would return.
568
00:49:28.471 --> 00:49:31.721 line:15%
[Irme speaking German]
569
00:50:02.962 --> 00:50:07.545
570
00:50:08.500 --> 00:50:11.740
of the morgue, outside the Morgan Valencia.
571
00:50:11.740 --> 00:50:15.130
She starts outside and the interior of the morgue,
572
00:50:15.130 --> 00:50:17.030
looking out through the gates,
573
00:50:17.030 --> 00:50:19.460
looking at all of the people who had come to gather
574
00:50:19.460 --> 00:50:22.160
to find out information about their families.
575
00:50:22.160 --> 00:50:27.160
And you can see her literally walking pacing like a panther,
576
00:50:27.310 --> 00:50:32.310
looking at the faces of the people in the morgue and framing
577
00:50:32.770 --> 00:50:36.060
and really looking what is the best shot here.
578
00:50:36.060 --> 00:50:38.190
And I think at the seventh frame,
579
00:50:38.190 --> 00:50:41.070
she turns her camera finally vertically
580
00:50:41.070 --> 00:50:45.000
and then takes one shot and then goes in closer
581
00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:46.480
and gets a second shot.
582
00:50:46.480 --> 00:50:49.070
And it\'s that picture that ends up in the,
583
00:50:49.070 --> 00:50:50.710
the cover of Regards magazine.
584
00:50:50.710 --> 00:50:51.940
You really see her work.
585
00:50:51.940 --> 00:50:56.180
You really see her struggling to figure out what is going to
586
00:50:56.180 --> 00:51:00.040
ring to the editors and ring out to the
587
00:51:00.040 --> 00:51:01.700
ultimate readers of the magazines.
588
00:51:01.700 --> 00:51:03.880
And you just don\'t see that in a pile of prints,
589
00:51:03.880 --> 00:51:07.467
because you may have only that one selected image.
590
00:51:07.467 --> 00:51:10.253
So you have no idea where it became before or after.
591
00:51:21.580 --> 00:51:26.480
592
00:51:26.480 --> 00:51:29.120 line:15%
who\'s a curator at the ICP.
593
00:51:29.120 --> 00:51:32.400 line:15%
And she said, \"I have some interesting news for you.
594
00:51:32.400 --> 00:51:37.353
We just got back all of Robert Capa\'s pictures,
595
00:51:38.460 --> 00:51:42.090
negatives from Mexico in this thing,
596
00:51:42.090 --> 00:51:44.340
we\'re calling the Mexican Suitcase,
597
00:51:44.340 --> 00:51:49.340
and we found two rolls of Fred Stein\'s pictures in it.\"
598
00:51:50.360 --> 00:51:52.753
And I was stunned.
599
00:51:57.430 --> 00:52:02.060
I know that my father gave those negatives to Capa.
600
00:52:02.060 --> 00:52:06.860
In fact, during the big funeral procession for Gerda Taro
601
00:52:06.860 --> 00:52:09.750
my father saw Capa leave the Cortez.
602
00:52:09.750 --> 00:52:11.367
He just couldn\'t take the pain.
603
00:52:11.367 --> 00:52:14.190
It was too much for him. He couldn\'t stand it.
604
00:52:14.190 --> 00:52:18.810
My father realized just how intense his feeling
605
00:52:18.810 --> 00:52:23.810
and the devastation that he felt for the loss of Taro.
606
00:52:24.070 --> 00:52:28.270
So because of that, he offered Capa of these negatives.
607
00:52:28.270 --> 00:52:33.270
And I think that Capa put these negatives of Gerda Taro
608
00:52:33.860 --> 00:52:36.350
together with the rest of his negatives
609
00:52:36.350 --> 00:52:37.960
of the Spanish Civil War,
610
00:52:37.960 --> 00:52:40.290
because that was a chapter in his life
611
00:52:40.290 --> 00:52:42.903
that he wanted to keep that chapter together.
612
00:52:54.640 --> 00:52:56.480
613
00:52:56.480 --> 00:52:59.340
the outline of your shadow hones your negatives,
614
00:52:59.340 --> 00:53:01.803
just as it hones this journey on your footsteps.
615
00:53:06.350 --> 00:53:09.933
For decades, your story was blended with Robert Capa\'s,
616
00:53:10.790 --> 00:53:13.150
Elena Garrow, the Mexican writer whose path
617
00:53:13.150 --> 00:53:16.110
you crossed in Spain wrote that you were
618
00:53:16.110 --> 00:53:19.310
surrounded by the tragic romantic aura of young,
619
00:53:19.310 --> 00:53:21.153
handsome, adventurous in love.
620
00:53:26.660 --> 00:53:28.610
How can we resist the myth?
621
00:53:28.610 --> 00:53:31.513
How can we grow your rightful place in history?
622
00:53:37.770 --> 00:53:38.603
623
00:53:38.603 --> 00:53:42.780
I\'ve read so many articles about Taro proposals,
624
00:53:42.780 --> 00:53:46.410
and I\'ve been shocked and struck by the fact that
625
00:53:46.410 --> 00:53:50.400
they wanna do a project on Gerda and Capa.
626
00:53:50.400 --> 00:53:54.020
And there\'s this real imbalance of how they approach
627
00:53:54.020 --> 00:53:55.890
the people that there\'s this intimacy,
628
00:53:55.890 --> 00:53:59.080
you know immediate intimacy with Taro as a woman,
629
00:53:59.080 --> 00:54:01.350
and that they can immediately call her by her first name
630
00:54:01.350 --> 00:54:06.110
with Capa is sort of the respected man
631
00:54:06.110 --> 00:54:09.600
whose name you\'re only gonna refer to by the last.
632
00:54:09.600 --> 00:54:12.500
It\'s an interesting difference
633
00:54:12.500 --> 00:54:15.770
in the way that we approach male historical figures
634
00:54:15.770 --> 00:54:17.830
and female historical figures.
635
00:54:25.223 --> 00:54:28.640 line:15%
[Lorna speaking Spanish]
636
00:54:54.125 --> 00:54:57.375 line:15%
[Irme speaking German]
637
00:55:19.240 --> 00:55:20.470
638
00:55:20.470 --> 00:55:22.940
all the puzzles pieces together,
639
00:55:22.940 --> 00:55:25.223
but we must accept that some are missing.
640
00:55:26.450 --> 00:55:28.863
Accept that we shall never hear your voice.
641
00:55:33.070 --> 00:55:36.343
And suddenly see you appear in an archive.
642
00:55:37.500 --> 00:55:41.750
You were in Valencia on the 4th of July, 1937
643
00:55:41.750 --> 00:55:43.810
to cover the opening of the rightest Congress
644
00:55:43.810 --> 00:55:45.160
for the defense of culture.
645
00:55:47.360 --> 00:55:51.520
While war was raging around 200 writers from 30 countries
646
00:55:51.520 --> 00:55:53.200
were there to showcase their support
647
00:55:53.200 --> 00:55:55.100
to the Spanish Republic struggle
648
00:55:55.100 --> 00:55:57.453
and their unwavering resistance to fascism.
649
00:56:01.490 --> 00:56:04.060
A Soviet filmmaker captured your silhouette
650
00:56:05.160 --> 00:56:08.193
fleeting shots filmed just before your passing.
651
00:56:29.590 --> 00:56:34.070
Today and dying traces of you remain, your photographs
652
00:56:37.890 --> 00:56:41.900
And attribute paid by Léon Moussinac who recalled,
653
00:56:41.900 --> 00:56:44.340
this fearfully vivid image,
654
00:56:44.340 --> 00:56:48.280
the sharp charming deliberate outline of a woman
655
00:56:48.280 --> 00:56:50.600
above the Brunete wheat fields.
656
00:56:50.600 --> 00:56:53.540
A small child surfaced striking the sky while
657
00:56:53.540 --> 00:56:57.770
suddenly out of the quiet, the quiet of farewell,
658
00:56:57.770 --> 00:57:01.703
a skylark busts into song, and Gerda smiles.
659
00:57:07.077 --> 00:57:10.077
[soft violin music]
Distributor: Icarus Films
Length: 58 minutes
Date: 2021
Genre: Expository
Language: French; English; German; Spanish / English subtitles
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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