Gerda Taro – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Unidentified Photographer, Gerda Taro, Guadalajara Front, July 1937

The excellent photoblog 'Fans in a Flashbulb' have posted a great profile on Gerda Taro, the photojournalist who was the love of Robert Capa's life and probably the biggest influence on his life and career.

Over the years Gerda's photography has been overshadowed by Capa's. but in recent years the interest in her photography and life has grown. The two photographers worked closely together and their work was published widely but sadly Gerda was killed in July 1937 while covering the civil war in Spain. 

'She returns to Madrid a few days later, then travels with Ted Allan to a battle site located between Villanueva de la Cañada and Brunete. There, on July 25, one day before her return to Paris, Taro and Allan find themselves in the midst of a panicked retreat. They jump onto a moving car and are both hit when a Loyalist tank crashes into the car. 

Taro dies early the next morning in a field hospital of the 35th Division at El Escorial. She is the first female photographer to be killed while reporting on war.'

Robert Capa never really recovered from the loss.

The excellent Gerda Taro – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow can be found at:

https://fansinaflashbulb.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/female-fotographer-fridays-gerda-taro-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow/

Three Recommended Links

The blog has been rather quiet of late, but it's time to start posting again after a brief break away with three recommended photography links discovered while i was away. I'm going to be adding link posts a couple of times a month to the blog from now on as well as adding other new photo posts.

The first is from the New York Times Lens photoblog and  looks into 'Debating the Rules and Ethics of Digital Photojournalism'. The core of the problem is the ease which digital images can be manipulated and changed. Its a discussion that has been long overdue and has yet to be resolved - maybe it never will be resolved. Another great article on the matter is by David Campbell. One aspect i found problematic was the number of photographers who thought of their images as the 'truth'.

The Atlantic photoblog recently did a three part series (part 1, part 2, Part 3) on the Vietnam War marking fifty years since U.S Marines landed in South Vietnam. Covering such a conflict in three sections is never going to easy especially as the Vietnam war was so extensively photographed, but many of the images i'd never seen before. The final part of series featured a great set of photographs by Eddie Adams.

The final link is a sad but thought provoking photo essay by Lisa Krantz, a photographer at the San Antonio Express-News, entitled 'One Man’s Lifelong Battle With Obesity'. Krantz spent four years working on the story that she initially thought would be about weight loss but  it developed into something far deeper.