by Desconhecido
3 “We’ll have only one chance”: Kershaw, Blood and Champagne, p. 121.
3 “They are tough experienced men”: Capa, in Whelan, This Is War!, p. 214.
4 “Exhausted from the water and the fear”: Whelan, Robert Capa: A Biography, p. 212.
4 “The empty camera trembled in my hands”: Capa, Slightly Out of Focus, p. 148.
5 “in the water, holding his cameras”: Whelan, This Is War!, p. 235.
CHAPTER ONE
7 If he could just find the girl: The story of Capa approaching Ruth Cerf in a café to be a model for a Swiss insurance assignment is told in all the major biographies of both Capa and Taro. Details were amplified with a Whelan interview with Ruth Cerf Berg, May 2, 1982; Berg letter to Peter Wyden, Mar. 27, 1987, translated from the German by Kirin and Sunaya DasGupta Mueller.
8 “unity of mind and will”: Adolf Hitler, “Appeal to the German People,” Jan. 31, 1933, German History in Documents and Images, germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org.
9 But the United States has strict limits: see Marc Aronson, Race: A History Beyond Black and White (New York: Atheneum, 2007), pp. 195–200.
9 “Conditions in Paris”: Robert Capa letter to his nieces, February 1935, International Center of Photography.
11 “Growing up in Budapest”: interview and notes of Geza Korvin Karpathi by Josefa Stuart, ICP, no date.
11 “You are a cancer of the class!”: Cornell Capa, interview and notes, ICP, no date.
12 “The girls in the [Communist] Party are too ugly”: Whelan, Robert Capa: A Biography, p. 59.
12 “The most charming boy”: interview of Fred Stein by Josefa Stuart, ICP.
14 “beautiful, like a little deer, with big eyes, auburn hair, and fine features”: Henri Cartier-Bresson, interview by Josefa Stuart, Jan. 23, 1959, ICP.
15 Immediately, they fled into hiding: Schaber, Whelan, and Lubben, eds. Gerda Taro, p. 12.
15 bright checked skirt: Rogoyska, Gerda Taro: Inventing Robert Capa, p. 26.
16 On weekends, they’d stay in their room: Berg interview by Whelan, Apr. 2, 1982, ICP.
17 “we were all of the Left”: Berg to Wyden, Mar. 27, 1987.
17 These images have been attributed to Fred Stein, but his son is not sure of that claim.
CHAPTER TWO
19 “in Madrid I felt I had become a nobody”: Capa letter to Gerta Pohorylle, April 1935, ICP.
19–23 The details of Capa and Taro’s life together in Paris are drawn largely from his letters to his mother, Julia Friedmann, in the years 1934–36, ICP.
20 “Imagine, Mother”: Capa to Friedmann, Sept. 9, 1935.
20 “Considering that she is even more intelligent”: Capa to Friedmann, Nov. 15, 1935.
21 “She does not put a lock on her mouth”: Capa to Friedmann, Nov. 15, 1935.
21 “Ragged one”: Capa to Friedmann, Apr. 8, 1936.
21 “The good girl she is,” Capa to Friedmann, Feb. 5, 1936.
21 “Our money momentarily”: Capa to Friedmann, September 1935, ICP.
22 “Never before in my life have I been so happy!”: Whelan, Robert Capa: A Biography, p. 74.
23 “One could almost say that I’ve been born again”: Whelan, Robert Capa: A Biography, p. 80.
23 “a farewell to any fixed point”: Maspero, Out of the Shadows, p. 39.
CHAPTER THREE
25 “At the very moment”: Joseph Freeman in Marc Aronson, Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies (Somerville, MA: Candlewick), p. 66.
27 The twentieth century: Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism, 1932, text available at worldfuturefund.org.
29 Every weekend brings another Popular Front march: Whelan, Robert Capa: A Biography, p. 84.
31 “Chim thought about everything very deeply”: Henri Cartier-Bresson, interview by Richard Whelan, Apr. 13, 1982, ICP.
32 “crouching and watching like a cat”: Fred Stein, interview by Richard Whelan, ICP, no date.
37 “Call yourself a photojournalist”: Whelan, Robert Capa: A Biography, p. 58.
37 “It was a job immigrants”: Michel Lefebvre and Bernard Lebrun, “Where Does the Mexican Suitcase Come From?” in The Mexican Suitcase, ed. Cynthia Young, Vol. 1, p.75.
39 “Tell that ridiculous boy Friedmann”: Whelan, Robert Capa: A Biography, p. 88.
39 By the time they return to the house: Interview with Josefa Stuart, in Vaill, Hotel Florida, p. 32.
40 “Everyone in his senses knew”: Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage: The Communist Conspiracy in the Spanish Civil War (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961), p. 18.
40 “At stake”: Vaill, Hotel Florida, p. 1.
40–41 “Long live the Popular Front!”: Dolores Ibárruri, speech July 19, 1936, Madrid, translated by Fabien Malouin, available on “No Pasaran,” Wikisource, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki.
42 In Madrid, restaurants serve free meals: Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, p. 292.
42 “When the fighting broke out”: Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, p. 48.
42 “Dear boy”: Chim, letter to a friend, Jan. 29, 1932, Chim Archive, courtesy of Ben Schneiderman.
43 “they were deeply in love”: Lebrun and Lefebvre, Robert Capa: The Paris Years, p. 86.
43 “far beyond the trenches of Madrid”: Mikhail Koltsov in Schlögel, Moscow, 1937, pp. 95–96. Schlögel is quoting from another book that is largely drawn from Koltsov’s writing for Pravda.
43 “This world will not be worth living”: Matthews, Two Wars and More to Come, p. 207.
CHAPTER FOUR
47 Barcelona is “startling and overwhelming”: Orwell, p. 4.
48 “When we went into the villages”: Lisa Berger and Carol Mazer, directors, De toda la vida [All our lives], 1986, 55 min., https://youtube/1-4.SVzmzW4.
49 “small but enormously strong”: Berg interview by Whelan, Apr. 2, 1982.
50 “The revolutionary posters were everywhere”: Orwell, p. 5.
51 “bellowing revolutionary songs all day”: Orwell, p. 5.
53 Spain is often called: Sun and shade (sol y sombra) is certainly a cliché, and it would be easy to show how it oversimplifies Spanish history, or is equally apt for other countries. But it is the phrase that the Spanish Civil War tour guide Alan Warren used in discussing the revenge killings during the war with us, and thus we feel justified in using it here.
54 The Falangists are fierce fighters: Preston, The Spanish Civil War, p. 55.
54 shoot them in the cemetery: Preston, The Spanish Civil War, p. 55.
54 “hold him while a third,” and “sick at heart”: Jay Allen, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 30, 1936; part I, page 2.
55 “a group of peasants”: Szurek, The Shattered Dream, p. 93.
57 “this tawny land”: Jay Allen, prologue to Death in the Making, by Robert Capa (New York: Covici Friede, 1938).
58 During this time seventeen hundred agrarian collectives will be created: Berger and Mazer, directors, De toda la vida [All our lives], 1986, 55 min., https://youtube/1-4.SVzmzW4.
59 “the mingled boredom and discomfort of stationary warfare”: Orwell, p. 24.
61 “I love Spain”: Wyden, The Passionate War, p. 120.
61 The rebels and their hostages: Wyden, p. 123.
64 “They both had a way of not appearing”: Herbert Matthews interview by Josefa Stuart, ICP.
64 “almost children”: Vaill, pp. 55–56.
65 “like people and let them know it”: Cornell Capa in Hardt, “Remembering Capa,” p. 35.
CHAPTER FIVE
70 “The Strait of Gibraltar”: Wyden, p. 81.
73 The gold shipment: Payne, Fascism in Spain, p. 150.
73 “deed or thought”: Stalin in Aronson, Master of Deceit, p. 97; several recent academic books, including Snyder, Bloodlands, Schlögel, Moscow, and Payne, The Spanish Civil War, emphasize the connection between extreme repression in the Soviet Union and the propaganda value of supporting the Republic. To get a sense of life in Stalin’s Russia, see M
. T. Anderson, Symphony for the City of the Dead (Somerville, MA: Candlewick, 2015).
74 “Far below and flat to the eye lay Spain”: Bessie, Men in Battle, p. 24.
75 “lemon-trees with their bright”: Bessie, Men in Battle, p. 25.
75 “There has been nothing like the International Column”: Matthews, p. 207.
77 “there would someday be a world of people”: Bessie, Men in Battle, p. 30.
77 “From the first day of the outbreak”: Szurek, p. 83.
77 “We must know”: Duberman, Paul Robeson, p. 220; “The artist must take sides,” Robeson in Boyle and Bunie, Paul Robeson, p. 377. There are a number of easily available videos in which Robeson talks about the cause of Spain, including http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/robeson-primary-resources/paul-robeson-activism–speech.
78 “I’ve met wide-awake Negroes”: Langston Hughes, “Negroes in Spain,” The Volunteer for Liberty, 1937, available at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/gl/hughes/inspain.htm.
78 “I cut pictures of women guerrillas out of the papers”: Jackson, British Women and the Spanish Civil War, p. 192.
78 “an indifference to danger”: Regler, The Owl of Minerva, p. 284.
79 “In Spain today”: Shirsho Dasgupta, “Eighty Years Later: A Homage to Catalonia: Indians and the Spanish Civil War,” The Wire, May 22, 2016.
79–80 “The flags of Great Britain”: Bessie, Men in Battle, p. 45.
80 “Spain was the threatened friend”: Regler, p. 271.
80 “quite different from anything that had gone before”: Orwell, p. 101.
CHAPTER SIX
83 In September, Vu ran a huge spread: Vaill, p.57; Whelan, This Is War!, p. 66.
85 “The fascists were standing”: Barea in Preston, TSCW, p. 88.
86 “loose brown Glengarry caps”: George Esenwein, “Defence of Madrid,” The Spanish Civil War: A Modern Tragedy, p. 57.
86 These volunteers are swiftly dispatched: Anderson, The Spanish Civil War, pp. 57–59.
86 “With eyes still wounded by sleep”: Pablo Neruda, “Madrid (1936),” Spain in Our Hearts, p. 9.
88 “now it had a stripped appearance”: Vaill, p. 83; Herbst, The Starched Blue Sky of Spain, pp. 136–137.
88–89 Here Capa meets Gustav Regler: The account of Capa’s meeting with Regler and Lukács combines several sources, secondary and primary. We have also combined two Gustav Regler interviews with Josefa Stuart in which he retold the incident.
88 “in a halo of blue smoke”: Lebrun and Lefebvre, p. 120.
88 “Maybe he’d like me to take him there on horseback”: Lebrun and Lefebvre, p. 120.
90 “You’ve got me trapped by the Moors!”: Regler, interview by Stuart, 1959, ICP.
90 “My intestines were not so brave as my camera”: Regler, interview by Stuart, 1959, ICP.
90 “delicate scientific instruments”: John Sommerfield, in Guttman, The Wound in the Heart, p. 87.
92 A proud capital: Wyden, p. 230.
94 “It is better to be the widow”: Wyden, p. 196.
94 “side by side, arm in arm”: Barea, The Forging of a Rebel, p. 601.
96 “insulted”: Kershaw, p. 52.
CHAPTER SEVEN
99 “Capa changed photography”: Gisèle Freund, interview by Richard Whelan, Dec. 18, 1981, ICP. For further information about photography, layout, design, and magazines in this period—and a great many examples—see chapters 26, 28, and 32 in Michel Frizot, ed., A New History of Photography; for examples of Capa’s and Taro’s images used in layouts as discussed in the text, see Frizot and de Veigy, Vu, and Lebrun and Lefebvre, Robert Capa: The Paris Years.
100 “automatic sense”: Henri Cartier-Bresson, interview by Josefa Stuart, Feb. 6, 1959, ICP.
105 “What was new and prophetic”: Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War, p. 22.
105 The first issue sells: Whelan, This Is War!, p. 48.
CHAPTER EIGHT
109 “a race against death”: Cockburn, Cockburn in Spain, p. 148.
110 “seventy miles of people”: T. C. Worsley in Preston, TSCW, p. 100.
114 “Of all the places to be in the world”: Matthews, p. 185.
114 “He seemed to be able”: Regler, interview by Stuart, 1959.
114–115 “Their faces glowed”: Rogoyska, pp. 118–119.
116 She wears her long raincoat, a beret, sometimes stockings and heels: This description is derived from images retrieved in the Mexican Suitcase, where Taro in these clothes can be seen in the corner of one image with the Leica hanging by a strap around her neck (Young, The Mexican Suitcase, vol. 2, p. 156).
118 “Surrealism”: Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, in notebook 7, Archives Nationales de France, digital version courtesy ICP.
118 “You could see people around Madrid”: Martha Gellhorn, “High Explosive for Everyone” in The Face of War, p. 25.
119 “At the end of the avenue”: Cowles in Adam Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), p. 162.
CHAPTER NINE
122 “She was more realistic”: Berg to Wyden, Mar. 27, 1987.
123 copains: This interpretation of the word copain comes from Irme Schaber, who illuminated its meaning as it was understood within Capa and Taro’s political, artistic, and social circles, in Gerda Taro: Fotoreporterin, p. 149.
125 Just as she and Capa reinvented themselves: Schaber, Gerda Taro: Fotoreporterin, p. 149.
126 “great courage”: Regler, interview by Stuart, 1959.
126 Even journalists: Matthews, p. 252.
126 “Madrid will be the tomb of fascism!”: A. L. Strong in Esenwein, p. 56.
126 “The strafing from machine guns”: Matthews, p. 263.
126 “nothing more to be seen”: Matthews, p. 266.
127 “It was terrible”: Vaill, p. 141.
CHAPTER TEN
133 “with a fringe of men”: Barea, p. 655.
136 “I soon adopted him as a father”: Capa, p. 129.
138 there are mistakes: Vernon, Hemingway’s Second War, p. 29; Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 30.
139 “I turned round and saw some youths”: Orwell, p. 121.
140 “The war and the revolution are inseparable”: Orwell, p. 61.
140–141 “I used to sit on the roof”: Orwell, p. 130.
142 “long French loaves, mounds of butter,” Regler, p. 315.
142 Taro’s family, back in Germany: Irme Schaber, “In the Picture with Irme Schaber: The Life and Work of Gerda Taro,” lecture at Frontline Club, London, Oct. 17, 2008, frontlineclub.org.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
145 “very simple, moving photographs”: Allen, prologue to Capa, Death in the Making.
147 “We found ourselves together”: Allen, prologue.
147 “if your pictures aren’t”: Fred Ritchin, “Close Witness: The Involvement of the Photojournalist” in Frizot, A New History of Photography, p. 591.
148 “He was truly brave”: Regler, interview by Stuart, ICP.
148 “incompatibility of being a reporter”: Capa, p. 33.
150 “I want to make movies more than anything else”: Capa, letter to Julia Friedman and his nieces, February 1935, ICP.
151 swollen to more than a million: Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 5.
151 “seemed to have nothing better to do”: Cowles, p. 6.
152 bring movie flood lamps: Taro, telegram to Capa, May 18, 1937, ICP.
CHAPTER TWELVE
156 “a warm voice with a full timbre”: Geza Korvin Karpathi interview, ICP.
156 “We all loved Gerda”: Szurek, p. 171.
156 “I want to make movies”: Robert Capa to Julia Friedmann and his neices, February 1935, ICP.
158 “You felt that you were taking part in a crusade”: Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, p. 235.
159 “She was right alongside him in everything”: Cartier-Bresson, interview by Stuart, Jan. 23, 1959.
160 “Better there than my heart”: Schaber, p
. 185; Vaill, p. 209.
160 “The Spanish Civil War was ideal for Capa”: Regler, interview by Stuart, Feb. 27, 1959.
162 “Capa was an agreeable”: Joris Ivens interview, ICP.
162 “the charming lady reporter”: Irme Schaber, “Preliminary Remarks on Gerda Taro’s Documentation of the Defense of the Andalusian Mining Region, Córdoba Front,” in The Mexican Suitcase, ed. by Young, vol. 2, p. 241.
162 “You could hear the peals of female laughter”: Kantorowicz in Rogoyska, p. 173.
163 “Never had I seen so many well-shaven men here”: Rogoyska, p. 177.
163–164 “She confidently believed”: Maspero, p. 56.
164 La pequeña rubia: Schaber, p. 185.
164 “Get out!”: Orwell, p. 204.
164 “a peculiar evil feeling in the air”: Orwell, p. 195.
164–165 they cannot go to their homes, which “had been raided”: Orwell, p. 215.
165 “It is a terrible thing”: Orwell, p. 219.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
167 “spoiled children’s party”: Wyden, p. 394.
168 Taro and Capa are circling: The description of Taro at the writers’ conference is abetted by a Soviet news film where we can glimpse her for a few seconds: Roman Karmen and Boris Makasseyev, K Sobitiyam V Ispani, July 1937. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOFtmb2ds9Q. See 6:03–6:16. Our thanks to Amanda Vaill for bringing the film to our attention.
168 “wrapped in the tragic”: Schaber, p. 223.
170 “I leave Gerda in your charge”: Ted Allan, “Gerda,” in Ted Allan: A Partial Biography, normanallan.com.
171–172 “There were more men”: Matthews, p. 296.
172 By evening they had captured: Esenwein, TSCW, p. 217.
172–173 On their way back to Madrid: This description draws from Léon Moussinac, “Hommage à Gerda Taro,” Regards, Aug. 5, 1937; Vaill, p. 220.
173 Gellhorn has a personal friendship: Moorehead, Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, pp. 55–56.
