Art Knowledge News

 

Museu d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) to show Gerda Taro ~ Female Photo-journalism Pioneer

 Print E-mail
Written by rubin   
Wednesday, 08 July 2009 02:30

Gerda Taro - ' Marines playing musical instruments on board the battleship Jaime I, Almería, Spain ', February 1937 - Gelatin silver print - © International Center of Photography

Barcelona, Spain - For the first time in Spain the MNAC, in a joint production with the ICP, is to present a retrospective exhibition of the photographer Gerda Taro, a female pioneer in war photo-journalism and Robert Capa’s partner. The exhibition, bringing together 83 photographs and other documentary material, shows the enormous aesthetic quality of her work, its historical interest, and her sensitivity to be able to capture the human face of war. The exhibition puts Taro’s work into context and reveals to us and champions the figure of a woman photographer who has stayed in the shadow of Robert Capa, from whom she learned the techniques of photography.

With him, Taro came to Spain and worked as a graphic reporter of the Civil War for publications like Vu, Regards, Ce Soir, Voilà or Match. Both of them covered the war on the Andalusia, Madrid, Aragon, Guadarrama, Toledo and Teruel fronts, plus the farewell to the International Brigades and the fall of Barcelona. Gerda Taro was killed in 1937 at the battle of Brunete when, returning from the front, she was crushed by a tank.

Taro was ahead of the work of other photographers who later covered the Second World War, such as Lee Miller or Margaret Bourke-White, taking photographs with the soldiers, on the battlefield and in the trenches.

Gerda Taro - Robert Capa, Segovia front, Spain, May 1937 - Gelatin silver print © 2002 International Center of PhotographyIn 1934, when she met Endre Enrö Friedmann (Robert Capa) in Paris, she changed her name (a tribute to the Japanese artist Taro Okamoto) and came up with the idea, together with her partner, of changing his to Robert Capa. This way they invented the fictitious figure of an American reporter under whose name they would be able to sell their photographs for three times the usual price.

Gerda Taro (1910-1937) was a pioneering photojournalist whose brief career consisted almost exclusively of dramatic photographs from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. Her photographs were widely reproduced in the French leftist press, and incorporated the dynamic camera angles of New Vision photography as well as a physical and emotional closeness to her subject.

Taro worked alongside Robert Capa, who was her photographic as well as romantic partner, and the two collaborated closely. Taro's photographs are a striking but little-known record of this important moment in the history of war photography. ICP now holds what is by far the world's largest collection of her work, including approximately 200 prints as well as original negatives. This exhibition will include vintage and modern prints, and magazine layouts using Taro's images. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 184-page ICP/Steidl catalogue, the first major collected document of Gerda Taro's photographs ever published. On view July-September, 2009.  Visit : http://www.mnac.cat/index.jsp?lan=003

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~