Eyes of the World Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and the Invention of Modern Photojournalism

by Desconhecido

  Now familiar with the Leica, Taro wants to test herself and establish her own name as a photographer. If Capa is a natural at action photography, Taro needs to find her own way, her own style. She settles into the Casa de Alianza de Escritores Antifascistas, the Madrid headquarters of the antifascist writers’ union. Once a grand and baronial mansion with a gracious, lush garden, it has been taken over by the government and is now run by a couple who are writers: María Teresa León and her husband, the poet Rafael Alberti. All day long journalists and artists—including the poets Langston Hughes and Pablo Neruda and the American novelist John Dos Passos—wander in and out of the rooms and stage readings. Not only does Taro have a luxurious two-room suite, but the couple lets her set up a little darkroom in the basement. Here, among other foreigners and intellectuals, Taro is at her best.

  During this time, Taro begins to tell others that she and Capa are back to being copains—companions, buddies, friends. Her choice of words may be not just about Capa but more about herself and her need to be separate, not in the shadow of any man, especially one who is gaining such a reputation. Taro is doing something utterly new—working as a female photographer in a war zone, typically a man’s world. She cuts a very unusual figure, and her use of the word copain may simply be a way of drawing a line around herself, declaring herself not “owned” by any man. Or maybe it’s a way of flirting with men, hinting that she is available, to get what she needs: a ride to the front or a tip on the site of the next battle. In many ways Capa and Taro are growing up and into their new roles. They were each other’s early loves and helped each other to create new identities, but now they are starting to become seasoned professionals. And with that come the inevitable strains.

  Very few images or negatives of Taro’s remain from March 1937. The last image is of the Arganda Bridge near Guadalajara, where the Republican army battled Mussolini’s Italian soldiers.

  The young Canadian writer Ted Allan is smitten with Taro, following her around, pleased when she flirts with him. He begins to conjure up the fantasy that they can be together. If Capa is only her copain, he thinks, then there’s room for him.

  Soldiers on the Jarama front eating, taken by Taro in April 1937.

  In March, Taro, shooting from a low angle, captures the “general mobilization” in which recruits look like statues, heroes of the Left. Yet compared to the Nazi soldiers (as seen on the Vu cover, page 68), they look remarkably disordered and even amateurish.

  This may be a misunderstanding on Allan’s part. Copain, in French, means the person who has your back, whom you can count on within the swirl of a larger group of close comrades. In the atmosphere of the Left, men and women are seeking new kinds of relationships where equality is paramount. Equality between men and women is, after all, one of the great promises of the revolution. Taro, with her bobbed hair, her declaration of independence, is most definitely in the mold of the New Woman. Just as she and Capa reinvented themselves from refugees to photographers with brand-new names, they are also asserting a new kind of modern relationship, one where they depend on each other as equals but can also be free.

  Taro plunges herself into shooting photographs, impressing everyone with her daring, determination, and “great courage.” Whenever she can wangle a ride in a car she heads out to the front. Her picture of the Arganda Bridge shows the world that loyalist government forces have held the road to Madrid.

  Then on March 8, news comes that as many as forty thousand of Mussolini’s Italian troops are on the march. The Black Flames, a fierce Italian armored division, breaks through near the city of Guadalajara, about forty miles northeast of the capital. It looks like the rebel troops might succeed in encircling Madrid. Even journalists eager to tell the government’s side of the story are worried that this is the end.

  “MADRID will be the tomb of fascism!”

  This is what the radio blares on the mornings when Taro rises at the Alianza and hustles to join the other journalists and get out to the action in Guadalajara.

  The weather has changed suddenly: by late morning a thick, soupy fog descends and icy rain sleets down, turning fields and dirt runways to mud. The fascists, dressed only in light tropical uniforms, are caught unawares. Government planes rumble off the runways and begin bombing the Italians. For the moment, the assault is stalled. Two days later, the Italians advance again, capturing the town of Brihuega. But the government has learned the power of aircraft.

  On March 13, government airplanes equipped with machine guns take to the sky, raining fire on the Italian troops, dropping 492 bombs and shooting two hundred thousand bullets at them. “The strafing from machine guns was incessant,” writes Herbert Matthews, the New York Times correspondent. “Many, many of the soldiers broke and ran under the strain, only to be pursued mercilessly by the aerial machine guns.” Some soldiers surrender and flee. In Brihuega there is “nothing more to be seen” but “those two heaps of Italian dead.” This is a decisive defeat for the fascists and a momentary success for the government side, which is sorely in need of a victory.

  In this March shot, the New People’s Army is taking shape: no more women, or people in civilian clothes. Unity and conformity are the messages being delivered by Taro’s carefully composed image.

  Taro watches all the bombing runs, clicking away, pressing herself close to the action. She returns at night to Madrid, pale and shaken. “It was terrible,” she recounts to the other journalists. “A hand here. A head there. . . . They were so young. Young Italian boys.”

  Taro has seen her first battle.

  THE NEW PEOPLE’S ARMY

  Once the conflict in Guadalajara is over, Taro rushes to the bustling government center of Valencia. The light here is strong and bright, and she takes photographs of the volunteer army training in a large amphitheater. With-out knowing it, Taro is recording the end of the first phase of the revolution in Spain. Just as she had done in Barcelona, she takes pictures of women in coveralls and uniforms, marching in drills. This will be the last time women will be a part of the army, however, for changes are afoot on the government side.

  The steadfast New People’s Army in Taro’s roll of negatives from March.

  The defeat in Málaga exposed the disorganization of the Republic’s troops. Now under pressure from its powerful supporter, the Soviet Union, the government decides to create the New People’s Army. The new army is to be organized under the communists, who will provide leadership and discipline. Stalin has his own motivations for demanding that the government create a new military force. He needs to put an end to the experiments in common ownership, such as the collectivized farms and industries. He does not want a revolution. He needs to keep his alliance with France and England, who will tolerate no challenges to private property. So, ironically, the Soviet Union, the center and symbol of communist revolution, has to stop the social revolution that is rolling out in Spain. In the army, in the government, in the cities, and on the farms, the cold-blooded Soviet leader seeks total control. The weak Spanish Republic agrees.

  Thus the People’s Army is born: a regimented army with a centralized command system. No more loose, democratic units where a volunteer can be a sergeant one day and an orderly the next; no more long discussions of tactics that can stretch on for hours. And no longer will women be equipped with guns and trained to join in combat. “Discipline, hierarchy, organization” is the motto of the People’s Army.

  Taro’s photo now graces the cover of Regards. The reorganized army is finally trained, equipped, and strong—but in the sequence from the smiling lovers Taro captured in Barcelona, through the men and women on page 125, to this masculine cover, there is also evidence of the rise of Soviet discipline over Spanish anarchist and socialist dreams.

  Taro’s pictures now feature a different approach, one that could be pulled right from a Soviet poster. The Mediterranean light is well suited to this kind of heroic imagery: in one picture a regiment stands at attention, casting long columns of shadow on the ground.
In another, a line of soldiers march, each with a hand on the shoulder in front. One photo shows a huge mass of soldiers in identical uniforms, their hands folded at their backs, standing at attention, listening to their leaders. Taro often shoots from below, so the soldiers become tall, towering stripes against the sky. She is showing order and unity, celebrating the molding of an efficient group. This is a professional army—not the ragged, idealistic individuals she portrayed on the Aragon front. These are images of an army for the masses, aimed to idealize the republican side. This group of pictures is the closest Taro will come to creating pure propaganda.

  Taro’s photographs will run in Ce Soir and in Regards—her first published work under her own name. She is making her mark.

  PARIS

  Back in Paris, Capa waits and waits, impatient to get back to Spain and rejoin Taro. He has settled his arrangement with Ce Soir, which gives him a salary and allows him and Taro to sell their images to other publications. He also rents a studio in Montparnasse, at 37 rue Froidevaux. Set back in a quiet street, the studio is one large room with high ceilings, soaring windows that look out on a cemetery, and a loft above, reached by spiral stairs. Capa hires his childhood friend Cziki Weisz to print his and Taro’s photographs and send them to publications, and he has stationery printed that reads at the top: ATELIER ROBERT CAPA.

  Taro’s pictures of the general mobilization receive a full page in Ce Soir.

  But Capa is already restless. For the moment, he cannot get back to Spain. With no papers, he can only travel when he has an official assignment. Ce Soir keeps him on less interesting European projects, much to Capa’s irritation. It is ironic that he earned the job because of his spectacular coverage in Madrid, but the magazine has yet to send him back. And he wants to be with Taro.

  When Taro returns to Paris at the end of March, he is relieved. She, too, is happy, for she is starting to taste her first independent success. Now she can actually see the fruits of her work: her images, some done with Capa, but some on her own and credited to her, are running in Ce Soir and other magazines. She is starting to feel more established, if only tentatively.

  Sometime in the spring of 1937 Robert Capa asks Gerda Taro to marry him. For the moment, she says no. She can’t marry with the war in Spain still on, she replies, as if to imply that her marriage, right now, is to the cause.

  Marriage—in a conventional sense—is just not on her mind. What could marriage mean for these two, shuttling between Paris and Spain every few weeks, Capa still without a home country or a proper passport? Even with their successes, they are still refugees in a dangerous world shadowed by rising fascism and the threat of global war. Marriage is simply not possible.

  Sure enough, by April it is not love calling, but war in Spain.

  Capa notices Taro picking out flowers to celebrate May Day in Paris. The war must have seemed far away in moments like this.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FRACTURES

  APRIL–MAY 1937

  SPRING RETURNS to Madrid. The city has held, and for now the threat of being encircled by Franco’s army has faded. During the warm days, the streets are filled, the cafés noisy and bustling, the evenings cool from the winds that blow in from the nearby mountains. The front is relatively quiet. The International Brigades have had a chance to take a break from their unremitting fight in the Jarama valley.

  And finally Capa is back in Spain with Taro.

  They join other journalists who daily roam through the same places—the Hotel Florida, which teems with foreign writers “with a fringe of men from the International Brigades”; Gaylord’s hotel, where the Russian advisers gather; and the office of the censor. In times of war, censors vet the news pieces that will be sent out to the world. In part, this is for security: to make sure that troop movements and tactics are not broadcast to the enemy. But it is also a way of controlling the story of the war. The Spanish government does not want to advertise the presence of the Soviets, which violates the non-intervention rule. So the censor will not allow reporters to mention the Russian men and weapons. British and American papers are not willing to print stories about interventions on the fascist side—the Germans or Italians in Spain—since supposedly no outside country is involved. All the journalists know they are performing a delicate dance—telling the truth, describing what they witness, but doing it in a way that conforms to the image of those who control the message.

  This anti-POUM poster—claiming that “behind the mask,” POUM was a front for rabid Nazis—was published in the Spanish Communist Party newspaper, and then republished in a British anti-Stalinist journal to show the threat to POUM. The question of who was betraying whom was tearing the Left apart.

  At night journalists and officials eat in the basement restaurant of the Hotel Gran Vía, which is crowded, blue with cigarette smoke, and thick with gossip and intrigue. There is talk of a “fifth column”—a spy network meant to undermine the Republic. As they eat greasy chickpeas, occasional mortar and shells scream and thud outside, reminding them that the front is not so far away. Madrid’s current relative safety is tentative, fragile.

  Around this time the burly American author Ernest Hemingway arrives at the Hotel Florida. Although he is married, with his wife left fuming in Key West, Florida, his not-so-secret girlfriend, the American writer and journalist Martha Gellhorn, arrives soon after. Hemingway—called Papa by many—is famous for his novels A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, which portray a generation lost, damaged, and made rootless by World War I. He is passionate about Spain and lends an air of celebrity to the cause of the Republic.

  Hemingway is the only one who has a two-room suite at the hotel, where he keeps ham, coffee, and bacon locked in his armoire. He’s the only one who has a car pull up in front of the lobby every day to speed him off to key sites and important meetings. The tall, blond Gellhorn, glamorous in her slacks and chiffon scarves, creates a stir among the other foreigners. She is trying to find her footing as a journalist in her own right, which isn’t easy in this macho atmosphere.

  Capa took this picture of Hemingway writing in his room at the Hotel Florida in late 1937.

  Hemingway has come to his beloved Spain to make a documentary called The Spanish Earth, in the hopes of raising money and support for the cause of the government. He has teamed up with a Dutch communist filmmaker, Joris Ivens, who in turn knows an old Hungarian pal of Capa’s: Geza Korvin Karpathi. It is through Karpathi that the two Americans, the Dutch filmmaker, and the photographers meet.

  One evening they all go out for a raucous long meal in a restaurant, where they eat ham and chicken and paella, a seafood rice dish. They drink wine and talk. Hemingway is drawn to Capa, taking him under his wing. “I soon adopted him as a father,” Capa would say, jokingly. But Hemingway does not like the smart, independent Taro, whom he sees as a dangerous man-killer, a femme fatale.

  Hemingway’s reaction gives a hint of what it was like for Taro as a female photojournalist during a time of war. For Hemingway, Spain and the war is a man’s world. Apparently the American writer doesn’t know what to make of the petite, foxlike Taro. She is a multilingual charmer who knows how to flirt so that she picks up tips on impending battles and is whisked to the front lines. There is a halo of glamour and intensity around her, and the Hotel Florida crowd all speak of her determination and courage. She and Capa are partners—equals—which is not at all how Hemingway sees his relationship with Gellhorn. He admires the much younger Gellhorn but views her as a budding talent, a student in training with the master. Hemingway doesn’t know how to make sense of the flirtatious, cosmopolitan Taro who is also a serious war journalist as brave as the men.

  And that is not all he is unwilling or unable to understand. There are dark shifts taking place in the Spanish Republic, and they put all supporters of the government into an impossible conflict.

  TRAITORS

  The photographs that Taro took of the People’s Army in Valencia, with their message of discipline and
unity, also suggest a chilling underside: the slow and systematic elimination of opposing points of view. The cold-blooded, deadly paranoia of Stalin’s purge trials has come to Spain.

  The Soviet dictator has realized that Spain is a golden opportunity for espionage. Every time his henchmen in Spain execute a citizen of another country for being a “traitor,” the Soviets can harvest a passport and send a spy in the dead man’s place. Every well-meaning organization aiding the government presents an opportunity to infiltrate more spies, more operatives, more men who are sure to spread whatever line Stalin decrees. Indeed, the New People’s Army is filled with official Soviet commissars whose job is to boost morale and to shape the men’s minds. But the more the Soviets use Spain for their own ends, the more suspicious the communists become—with deadly results. These dark, treacherous currents lie behind the painful rift between the novelists John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway.

  Dos Passos has been haunting the Hotel Florida and the Hotel Gran Vía asking too many questions. He lurches around, upset, asking anyone and everyone about José Robles, his friend and translator, who has been arrested and charged with treason. Dos Passos is desperate to find out what happened to him.

  Hemingway shrugs off Dos Passos, then turns hostile. He silences any questions about the motives or actions of the Soviets or their henchmen. Maybe, he even suggests, Robles was a traitor.

  In Hemingway’s mind, everyone must be allied with the struggle against fascism. Maybe it is similar to the way he dislikes Taro: he cannot tolerate anything that does not fit with his singular image of solid, manly, unwavering strength. He cannot allow the great sacred cause to come into question. But that does not mean he believes what he says.