Gerda Taro’s 108th Birthday Remarkable By Google Doodle's Today

Gerda Taro’s 108th Birthday Remarkable By Google Doodle

Gerda Taro, who carried a Polish passport, published her photographs in Ce Soir. She worked with the future Magnum agency co-founder Robert Capa, who was also her partner and first became famous as a war photographer in Spain. She died while photographing a chaotic retreat after the Battle of Brunete, shortly after Franco’s troops had won a major victory.

Gerda Taro, one of the world’s first and greatest war photographers, apparently lying on her deathbed in a hospital during the Spanish civil war, has been found 80 years after she was killed.

The photograph was published on Twitter several days ago by John Kiszely, a retired British lieutenant general, whose Hungarian father, Dr Janos Kiszely, was a volunteer doctor with the International Brigades who fought against Gen Francisco Franco during the Spanish civil war.

Though she was tiny in stature, Gerda Taro had the heart of a giant. Known as “the little red fox,” the ginger-haired photographer fearlessly turned her camera lens to capture sensitive and critical images of conflict around the world, producing powerful black-and-white images that informed readers of the newspaper Ce Soir. In fact, Taro is considered to be the first female journalist in the world to cover the front lines of conflict.

Born on this day in 1910 in Stuttgart, Germany, Taro moved to France shortly after Adolf hitler was appointed the chancellor of Germany 1933. In Paris she met Robert Capa, a fellow refugee three years her junior who taught her the basics of photography. They became friends, changed their names (she was originally named Gerta Pohorylle), and were enamored for a time. Capa would go on to co-found the Magnum Photo agency while Taro became known for her fearless reportage. “The troops loved her and she kept pushing,” said Taro’s biographer Jane Rogoyska. “Capa warned her not to take so many risks.”

During the last five months of Taro’s short career, she worked alone in Spain before tragically losing her life near El Escorial, northwest of Madrid, while capturing images on the front line of the Spanish Civil War in July 1937. By the age of 26, her searing battlefield images made her a household name, even though many of those images were misattributed to Capa.

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