GERDA TARO: Inventing Robert Capa
JANE ROGOYSKA Book Number: 79856 Product format: Hardback

Gerda Taro was almost certainly the first woman photojournalist to be killed in battle, knocked off the running board of a press car by an out-of-control tank during the Battle of Brunete in the Spanish Civil War. Her lover Robert Capa went on to achieve international fame as a photographer, but it was believed that thousands of photos taken by the couple in Spain had been lost when World War II forced the Jewish Capa into exile in New York, leaving his and Taro's negatives with a friend. These negatives eventually found their way to Mexico, where they were rediscovered in 2007, and experts have been able to distinguish between Capa's and Taro's work with a degree of probability, though not certainty. This impressive book clearly demonstrates that Gerda Taro was a big talent in photojournalism. It also tells the touching story of her love affair with Capa and the way they both reinvented themselves with new names when fleeing from Fascism. Taro worked hard to build up her lover's new identity, but her own work was relegated to obscurity because of her early death and the fact that she worked for a Communist newspaper. One of Taro's most striking shots shows two young boys on a brick barricade, their peaked caps imitating those of adult fighters. Her study of the New People's Army training exercises in 1937 shows the men from behind, with their back view expressing a lack of discipline that would soon be their undoing, while her picture of relatives queuing at the Valencia morgue is heart-rending. 244pp, black and white reproductions.
Published price: £35
Bibliophile price: £16.00

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