This is War!
Toro’s photograph of a woman training for the war
Capa’s photograph that appeared in Life magazine
Capa’s photograph “Death of a Loyalist Militiaman”
The International Center of Photography held an exhibit based on the theme of war photographs. It mainly included the work of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa and there was a smaller exhibit of Francesc Torres’ war photographs. Taro and Capa were close friends who had worked together and taken pictures of the Spanish Civil War. The photos they had taken were all in black and white and done manually. The photos were highly commended for exposing the realities of war through close photography of the war.
The exhibit began with photographs taken by Gerda Toro whose real name was Gerta Pohorylle. She was one of the first to take photographs of war and had them revealed to the public through the French leftists press, specifically Vu magazine. At first she used the square format Rollieflex and the changed to Leica, which produces rectangular prints and is used by Capa, in 1937. She had a brief career that mostly consisted of photographs from the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War. She had taken powerful images of young men fighting and dying in the war and women training for the war. One of her more interesting photos was one of a woman in Barcelona, Spain training for a Republican militia in August 1936. The shot is taken from up close and the woman is crouching and very focused on aiming her gun. She has a very concerned look on her face that causes the viewer to feel towards her for having to fight in a war. That woman could have been a mother or wife that is risking her life for freedom. Images, such as this, expose to the public the seriousness and horror of war. Unfortunately, in 1937, Taro was sideswiped by a tank after jumping onto the running board of a car transporting casualties during the battle of Brunete and killed. She also did not receive the recognition she deserved until years after she was killed.
In the show, Robert Capa’s exhibit called “This Is War! Robert Capa at Work” follows Taro’s images. Capa’s display focuses on his photographs covering five stories: the Spanish Civil War, China in 1938, the Sino-Japanese War, World War II, including D-Day in 1944, and the Liberation of Leipzig in 1945. Many of his images appeared on the covers and pages of leading worldwide picture magazines of the1930s and 1940s, including Vu and Life magazines, and many consider Capa to be one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century. One of his most famous pictures is the “Death of a Loyalist Militiaman”, which is often called “The Falling Soldier.” It is a striking image taken in 1936 of a soldier shot and falling to the ground about to die and thought to be the image that made Capa famous. Some say that the image is actually staged and not genuine. It does seem like it could have been staged because there is no visible bullet hole and no blood spurting out. Nonetheless, the image is graphic and powerful, once again depicting the graveness and terror of war.
Taro and Capa are pioneers in the sphere of war photography who got up close to the war and showed the public how gruesome and scary war really is. Their work has influenced other war photographers and has set the stage for the portrayal of war in the news and in magazines through the use of photos. Today, an example of their influence is the coverage of the Iraq war by showing pictures of it in the news.