Gerda Taro – War Photography at The Barbican

This show contains a revelation. Robert Capa, the Hungarian war photographer and founder of Magnum, the photo agency, famous for his Spanish Civil War photograph, Falling Soldier, is given the lion’s share of the upstairs gallery space and the ground floor is occupied by contemporary artists’ video film and stills from Afghanistan and Iraq, but the undisputed star of the show is the little-known Gerda Taro, who worked on the front line of the Spanish Civil War.

Taro was the first woman known to shoot pictures in battle and the first to die in action – in Spain in July 1937 at the age of 26 (Capa was to die in 1954 while on assignment in the First Indochina War). Born Gerta Pohorylle to a Polish-Jewish family, she was in Paris when she fell in love with André Friedmann. They later changed their names to Gerda Taro and Robert Capa.  Read the rest of the article at Times Online.

There is more about her life and work here.  I’m just blown away by this photo – such a sense of intent hopeless [is that me with my 20:20 historical perspective?] vulnerability, combining with mental images of kids playing cowboys ad indians… [sorry - we did that in the early 60s].

see what you think.

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