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Shot on infrared film in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Signed Limited Edition 11” x17” print of 10; stamped on verso. Professional black & white printing on Hahnemühle fibre-based Matt paper — museum-grade, acid-free, built to last. Stamped on verso. Price includes tax. Free shipping in the US.
Gerta Pohorylle… before she became Gerda Taro. Born August 1st, 1910. Dead July 26th, 1937. Twenty-six years old.
German Jew. War photographer. But before she was Gerda Taro, she and Endre Friedmann, another photographer, another refugee, cooked up a scheme. They invented Robert Capa. A fictional American photographer whose work they could sell for more money because, well, Americans got paid better than a couple of broke European Jews in Paris.
They both worked under the Capa alias at first. A lot of that early iconic work? Hers. His. Theirs. Hard to say where one ended and the other began.
Then they split the alias. She became Gerda Taro. He kept Capa. They started publishing independently, but they stayed together, professionally, romantically, messily. He proposed. She said no. They kept going anyway.
She covered the Spanish Civil War with a camera when most people had the good sense to run the other direction. First woman photojournalist killed on the frontline. That’s the distinction. That’s what she gets remembered for, not just her work, but how she died doing it.
They buried her at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Alberto Giacometti designed her grave. The sculptor made a falcon, Horus, the Egyptian god, to mark where she’s buried.
The epitaph is in French and Catalan: “So nobody will forget your unconditional struggle for a better world.”
Twenty-six years old. Camera in hand. Died trying to show people what war actually looks like.
Capa became a legend. Taro became a footnote for decades. But she was there first. She helped invent him.
Edition of 10. You know the price.
