Bøker av Irme Schaber

Paris in the summer of 1937. A giant funeral processionwends its way from the city center eastwardtoward the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, accompaniedby the sounds of Chopin's funeralmarch. The photojournalist Gerda Taro had beenkilled in the Spanish Civil War a few days earlier.Thousands come to pay their last respects to theémigrée from Hitler's Germany. The poet LouisAragon speaks at the graveside, young girls holdup a large portrait of the deceased. Why did theFrench Communist Party honor a foreigner - onewho was not even a member of the Party - witha »first-class« burial?Ernest Hemingway is said to have found GerdaTaro while searching for »better Germans«,the term he used to describe Germans fightingon the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.Taro is today considered one of the path-breakingpioneers of photography. She captured someof the most dramatic and widely published imagesof the Spanish Civil War and was the firstfemale photographer to shoot images in themidst of battle. Her willingness to work close tothe fighting set new standards for war photographyand ultimately cost her her life. Taro standsalongside early twentieth century war photographerslike Robert Capa and David »Chim« Seymour.Her death, the first fatality during war coverage,garnered worldwide attention. She hadbroken new ground, as a woman and as a photographer.Despite this, Gerda Taro has largely fallen intooblivion, especially in comparison to her colleagueand partner Robert Capa. Whether genderand religion played a role in this would requirea separate investigation. In any case, in herstudy of women resisting fascism, Ingrid Stroblreaches the conclusion that a combination suchas woman-Communist-Jew represented a threefoldstigma, and would almost guarantee Taro'sexclusion from official history, both in the Eastand the West.It has been almost twenty years since the firstbiography of Gerda Taro, written by Irme Schaber,led to Taro's rediscovery as a photographer.Since that time, the discovery of the »MexicanSuitcase«, containing more than 800 of her photos,has made new research on Taro possible.In this new, fully revised biography, Irme Schaberpresents groundbreaking insights regardingcameras, copyrights and the circumstances surroundingTaro's death.