Searching For Gerda Taro
Photography
•
57m
Directed by Camille Ménager • Documentary • 2021 • 58 minutes
SEARCHING FOR GERDA TARO celebrates the life and work of Taro — a charismatic Jewish refugee from Germany, an anti-fascist, and a trailblazing photographer whose work would be forgotten for decades.
In 1935, Taro (then going by her birth name, Gerta Pohorylle), met Endre Friedmann, a Jewish photographer from Hungary trying to make a name for himself in Paris. They fell in love and moved in together. The next year, they changed their names to Gerda Taro and Robert Capa. Capa taught Taro photography. Taro in turn helped sell his photos and build his reputation. Together, they went to Spain to report on the civil war from the front lines, a war she would cover for only a year before she herself would die — the first female war photographer to be killed on assignment.
SEARCHING FOR GERDA TARO shares dozens of stunning archival images by and of Taro. We come to understand her life and work through conversations with curators, authors, and descendants of those who knew her. For decades, her legacy was wrapped up with Capa’s, many of her photos seemingly lost. But with the discovery of thousands of her negatives in the mid-1990s, Taro can finally enjoy the credit she deserves as a brilliant photographer in her own right.
Up Next in Photography
-
Martha: A Picture Story
Directed by Selina Miles • Documentary • With Martha Cooper, Os Gemeos, Shepard Fairey • 2019 • 81 minutes
In 1970s New York, photographer Martha Cooper captured some of the first images of graffiti at a time when the city had declared war on it. Decades later, Cooper has become influential to t...
-
Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photo...
Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer • Documentary • With Matthew Weiner, Laurie Simmons • 2018 • 91 minutes
Described as a poet and philosopher of street photography, Garry Winogrand captured the American '60s and ‘70s. His Leica M4 snapped spontaneous images of everyday people, from the Mad Men era...
-
Battaglia
Directed by Daniela Zanzotto • Documentary • 2002 • 58 minutes
At almost 40 years old, Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia decided that being a mother and wife, the thing that she was meant to do according to the society she lived in, just wasn’t enough anymore. With great inner strength, sh...
