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

by Desconhecido

  Soon André was carrying equipment, and then taking on assignments himself and showing talent. He continued to move in leftist political circles, still with a whiff of the teenage prankster. On cold nights, André and his friends would pour buckets of water onto the streets in the hopes that the Nazis who marched past in their black boots would slip and fall.

  But by 1933, when Hitler was appointed chancellor, André began to see brown-shirted thugs assaulting Jews and leftists on the streets of Berlin. He knew it was time to leave. He and his childhood friend Cziki Weisz made their way to Paris.

  Ominous news from Germany followed him. Shortly after André left Berlin, Hitler’s regime began enacting laws against Jews, who were forbidden to hold any public-service jobs or work in professions such as the law. Jewish professors and students were forced to leave their universities. They were forbidden even to appear onstage or in movies.

  André’s identity card, issued in Berlin in 1931.

  PARIS MIGHT BE A HAVEN, but for how long? Flickering on screens in movie theaters are newsreels of the dictator thrusting his arm out in the Nazi salute, declaring his ambitions to conquer more of Europe, the world. Crackling over the Bakelite radios, shouting from a balcony in Rome, come the speeches of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, whose army is threatening to invade Ethiopia. The Japanese have taken over Manchuria. The League of Nations—the last hope for finding world peace—seems doomed as it can do nothing to halt either Mussolini or the Japanese. Everyone fears a new world war is imminent.

  André stays focused on his pictures. They are his ticket to survival. If his shots are good—not too blurred and rushed, as they sometimes are—then he will be able to earn enough francs to pay off his debts. He will get through just one more day.

  Fortunately, the photography session with Ruth Cerf is a success. She poses on a bench in a little park, her blond hair shining in the sunlight. Ruth photographs well—she has wide eyes and a large, sensuous mouth; her beauty has helped her to land several modeling jobs. Yet the whole time, it is actually Ruth’s vivacious, red-haired friend who catches André’s eye.

  Ruth’s friend looks like a silent movie star, and she knows it. Her eyebrows are plucked, giving her foxlike face a startled look, like the famous actress Greta Garbo. She looks like a girl who knows how to stretch her francs and carry herself with flair—she wears berets cocked just so on her hair, dyed red with henna. A friend describes her as “beautiful, like a little deer, with big eyes, auburn hair, and fine features.”

  He learns her name: Gerta Pohorylle.

  GERTA WAS ALWAYS DETERMINED. She grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, where her father was a Jewish grocer selling dairy goods. He made enough money to give his daughter a nice middle-class childhood. She enjoyed fashionable clothes, went to a girls’ school with other German children, spent one year at a Swiss boarding school, played tennis, and, in her teen years, had a dashing boyfriend.

  In 1929, when she was nineteen, her family moved to Leipzig. Her father’s business began to falter. Gerta was now drawn to politics. She joined the local Socialist Workers’ Party, as did her brothers, and all three siblings were soon active in anti-Nazi activities, including a leafleting campaign.

  A glamorous image of Gerta taken by an unknown photographer in Paris.

  One day in 1933 her two brothers dared to scatter anti-Nazi pamphlets from the roof of a department store. Immediately, they fled into hiding. Hoping to pressure the family, the authorities arrested Gerta, who arrived at the jail dressed in a bright checked skirt. Even in prison, Gerta never lost her lightheartedness. She spent several weeks locked up, developing friendships with the other inmates and passing the time by singing American jazz songs. She also displayed a hint of her steely bravery and sharp mind—tapping in code on the prison walls to communicate with others, crying in front of an official in order to soften his heart and secure her release.

  By the time she was set free from prison, Gerta knew she must leave Germany as soon as possible. And so, like André, like thousands of other young people, many of them Jewish, in October 1933 she rushed to Paris.

  Those early days in Paris! Gerta and her best friend, Ruth, who had come a few months before, roomed together. Gerta picked up a bit of work, but they had so little money that their stomachs gnawed with hunger. On weekends, they’d stay in their room and huddle under the quilt in their one bed, just to conserve energy. Or they’d head over to a café, where they’d play a trick: grabbing a croissant from a huge basket on the bar, they quickly ate half of it, signaling to the waiter to charge them and also order a drink. When the waiter turned his back, they would wolf down the rest of the croissant, then eat half of another.

  Fred Stein captured this image of the well-groomed young woman.

  For a brief while, she and Ruth roomed with Fred Stein and his wife, Liselotte, who had an enormous apartment with extra bedrooms. Fred had originally studied to be a lawyer in Berlin, but when he was unable to practice under Nazi law, he too picked up a camera and was making a go of it professionally.

  What good parties they all had there—putting colored bulbs in the lamps, dancing! Fred snapped pictures of Gerta, mugging away. Yes, being poor, a stranger in a strange city, was awful, but to have the solace of friends, all in the same situation, made it easier. Maybe that’s why, as Ruth put it, “we were all of the Left.” That is, they belonged to a loose collection of groups opposed to fascism and in favor of workers’ rights.

  Gerta was never exactly a joiner. Her sympathies, her ideas, came from her years in Leipzig. She hated the Nazis and knew how dangerous it was becoming for her family. But she wasn’t one of those who debated every political point. She wasn’t part of the Communist Party, which took its direction from the Soviet Union. But she did care about social issues, about the future ahead. They all did.

  For now, there was food and coffee at the Café du Dome and talk with friends. And photographs. Above all, photographs.

  Gerta mugs for the camera.Probably taken by André.

  This picture of Gerta and André at the Café du Dome, near their apartment, was taken in 1935 by Fred Stein, who was also a regular at the café.

  CHAPTER TWO

  COMPLETELY IN LOVE

  FALL 1934–SPRING 1936

  FROM THE START, Gerta treats André as a friend, a pal, a kind of project. In the undisciplined, lovably boyish André, she sees an enormous talent for photography. She shows André how to groom himself, gives him tips on how to present himself to magazines, and critiques his story ideas. In a way, she “professionalizes” him and makes him get serious about his photography.

  During this time, André’s feelings for Gerta begin to shift. He becomes more dependent on her—especially as there are many ups and downs in his life: though he gets assignments and sells pictures, half his projects fizzle out, and he can barely make ends meet. Still he dreams. Gerta becomes more attached to him, though she seems to think of him still as a friend, her copain—comrade and colleague—whose talent she believes in.

  In April, even though André lands an assignment in Spain, his spirits sink to a new low. Always the more emotional of the two, he confesses to Gerta that “in Madrid I felt I had become a nobody.” He ends his letter with a tentative confession, reaching out to the girl who is starting to steady his ambitions: “Sometimes, I am, nevertheless, completely in love with you.”

  That summer Gerta and André join a group of friends and camp out in the ruins of an old fortress in the south of France. It is a glorious two months’ adventure. They eat makeshift meals, swim in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, snap pictures. They leave all their troubles behind: they are not Jews, worried about a landlady who might be a Nazi sympathizer. They are not refugees without proper papers, fretting about their family. They are not running or desperate. They are just like any other young people, carefree, lighthearted. They build campfires, flirt, their eyes shining in the firelight.

  Fred Stein captured Gerta the hard-working career g
irl in this 1935 photo.

  And they fall in love.

  In autumn, André and Gerta move into a one-room apartment near the Eiffel Tower and set up a new life together. “Imagine, Mother,” André writes home, “my hair is short, my tie is hanging on my neck, my shoes are shined, and I appear on the scene at seven o’clock. And what is more surprising, in the evening at nine, I am already at home. In one word, it is the end of the bohemian life.”

  Gerta gets a new job working for Maria Eisner, who runs Alliance Photo, an agency that distributes photographs to newspapers and magazines all over Europe. With dramatic events swirling throughout the world, the demand for photographs is high. Selling photos is an excellent way for an outsider to get her footing in a foreign country.

  André proudly tells his mother, “Considering that she is even more intelligent than she is pretty, the results are great, and the firm is selling six times as many photographs as they had previously.”

  Gerta, the “ragged one,” with her tattered stockings, probably taken by André in 1935. “Our money momentarily is equal to zero,” André wrote to his mother in September 1935, “but we don’t have to starve, because what is needed for eating, somehow we obtain.”

  Work, love, friends, photography—it is all intertwined. Gerta advises André, types up the captions for his photographs, and sells them to her boss. She also makes André wear a blazer and tie, so that he makes a better impression on editors. Nor is Gerta one to hold back on criticism. “She does not put a lock on her mouth if she does not like something,” he sighs to his mother in a letter.

  Not that André is complaining. Since Gerta came into his life, he is more stable and focused. Sure, they cram into a skinny bed together and are lucky if they get five, six hours of sleep. She rises before him, just as the early morning’s light peeks through the window, to get dressed in front of the tiny mirror.

  “Ragged one,” he teases her, since she has to conceal holes in her clothes. “The good girl she is,” he writes his mother, “introduces me to every editor, helps me a great deal, and writes articles besides. On the other hand, she not only doesn’t darn my socks, she does not do anything about the holes in her stockings.”

  By seven, she’s rushing out the door to get to the office. He stays behind, tidies up, washes the breakfast dishes, and “proceeds to break all the glasses.” Then he spends all day out on the street, hustling to get assignments, hoping to sell his pictures.

  Gerta works side by side in the tiny office with Maria Eisner. She types and organizes photographs and is on the phone with publications. Thank goodness her father had thought to send her to a finishing school in Switzerland, for her knowledge of French and German, and just a bit of Spanish, has come in handy. Most recently, she’s been reading Nineteen Nineteen, a novel by the American writer John Dos Passos, to teach herself English. Bent over the typewriter, with her plucked eyebrows and the determined jut of her chin, Gerta is the essence of a career girl—self-willed and canny. She is “extremely ambitious,” André’s childhood friend Cziki Weisz observes, and is keen “to be famous.”

  André has begun to teach Gerta how to take photographs. Just as she helped André with his appearance, he trains her in how to aim the camera and frame a shot. This is the basis of their relationship—an exchange, a partnership, sharing their individual strengths and know-how. In art, women often serve as the muse for the male artist, the beauty who is photographed or painted. But André and Gerta are breaking new ground: they both are involved in the creation of the work. Their professional and personal lives are completely intertwined. André is the bold, intuitive risk taker, chasing after assignments. Gerta is lightly flirtatious, charming, with a clear sense of goals and how to present oneself to the world. They respect each other as equals, casting off traditional notions of man and woman, artist and subject, even husband and wife.

  “Never before in my life have I been so happy!” André tells his beloved mentor, André Kertész, another Hungarian photographer. “Now only the pick and the spade [the grave] could separate Gerta and me.”

  THE RUSE

  Imagine: You are young. You have nothing. How hard can it be to shed your old self and become someone new?

  There is one big way André and Gerta can make their luck change—their names. No one knows exactly who decided on the name change, but bets are on the savvy Gerta, with her eye for style and illusion. Together they come up with a scheme to land more lucrative photography jobs. Gerta will pretend she is trying to sell the photographs of a famous and rich American photographer named Robert Capa, who will offer his images for no less than 150 francs. She too will change her name: Gerta Pohorylle will become Gerda Taro—fascinatingly similar to Greta Garbo. Their new names give them an alluring, glamorous air. As Capa writes his mother about his new name, “One could almost say that I’ve been born again, but this time it didn’t cause anyone any pain.”

  There is another side to their name change. The situation for Jews is getting worse. At the Nazis’ Nuremberg rally in September 1935, Jews were declared unfit for citizenship in the Reich. With anti-Semitism on the rise and Paris increasingly hostile to foreigners, the couple wants to erase any sign of a particular nation, religion, or identity. Their new names are a disguise, a protection, “a farewell to any fixed point in the world, to any country.”

  This Vu cover reads: “At the Nuremberg Rally: The Apotheosis of Might.” The image of robotic soldiers conveys the sense of the growing Nazi threat.

  The ruse is a daring move. Every time someone asks to meet the elusive Robert Capa, Gerda hedges, saying he is busy traveling, and offers to send his dark-haired assistant “André” instead. Maria Eisner is suspicious when she sees the photographs Gerda shows her. She’s sure they’re Friedmann’s, but she decides to hold her tongue.

  Besides, “Robert’s” photographs are more and more in demand—especially as politics are heating up.

  Capa’s photo of the May Day celebrations shows the massive crowds, marching and waving flags, that poured into the Place de la République. Many demonstrations continue to be held in the same spot, creating a haunting connection between the political passions of the 1930s and those of today.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A STORY IN PICTURES

  PARIS, SPRING 1936

  MAY DAY—the symbolic day when workers around the world march and show unity. André and Gerta—now Robert Capa and Gerda Taro—are hurrying the few short blocks from their new, tiny apartment at the Hotel de Blois to meet friends at the Café du Dome. Together, they will take the metro across town to join the May Day celebrations at Place de la République.

  This May Day is especially charged, as elections will take place in two days. And the vote is not just about France—it is symbolic for all of Europe, which is now waging a war of ideas. What is the way forward? Which ideas, what plan, can save the world? Is it communism, led by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, which promises a workers’ paradise? To those who treasure the writing of Karl Marx, the Depression is simply to be expected—visible proof that capitalism is doomed. As one American puts it, “At the very moment when our own country, to the surprise of all except the Marxists, was sliding into a social-economic abyss, the new social system of the Russian workers and peasants showed striking gains.”

  The sequence of photos here through page 28, pages 30–33, and page 35 are Capa’s images of political demonstrations in 1936 and 1937. This photo was taken at a fascist rally in 1936; the raised arms in the other images, beginning on page 27, are the sign of the Popular Front.

  What about socialism, a modified, softer version of communism? Is this the answer? Or fascism, which offers an image of manly strength and unity? The term fascist comes from ancient Rome’s fascis; it means a bundle of sticks tightly bound together. The fascists claim that all of the divisions in a nation—rich and poor, left and right—will fall away when the nation unites behind a powerful leader. The twentieth century, Mussolini proudly announces, is to be a
“fascist century.”

  Socialists, communists, fascists all believe in an ever stronger government. Anarchists think just the opposite. They want to eliminate central government entirely so that people would live in small collectives where their voices could be heard and where all would work together for the good of all.

  Strong leader or no leader? Communism or socialism? Fascism or anarchism? Young people everywhere reach for these ideologies, yearning to see the world repaired. Every one of these movements is tempting because it promises a total solution: wipe away the old, diseased past and create a brand-new, modern future. Everyone is marching; everyone is declaring that they and only they have the answer to the world’s crippling troubles. Not far behind the speeches is the rumble of violence—skirmishes between armed factions on the streets and, even more ominous, armies training, nations preparing for war.

  Taken in Paris, 1936.

  Taken in Paris, 1936 or 1937.

  All through the spring of 1936, this clash fills the streets of Paris. The Soviet Union has ordered communist parties throughout the world to put aside their differences with the socialists and join forces in a new coalition, the Popular Front, which promises sweeping reforms. The decision of the socialists and communists to form a common alliance is like rivals in a playground deciding to band together to fight the bigger bully of fascism, which is threatening to take over. For Capa and Taro, for all the young people who are worried about the future, this election and the promise of the Popular Front represent a moment of hope. This is the time to unite and defeat the true enemy—fascism. Every weekend brings another Popular Front march.