Gerda Taro

Literally thousands of people lined the streets of Paris to mourn the death of Gerda Taro. It was 1 August 1937 and it would have been her 27th birthday. Chopin's Funeral March was played through tinny public loudspeakers and behind the coffin was her father, who had just arrived from Yugoslavia, but also a dark handsome 23 year old man who was so overcome he almost needed help just to walk.  The grand funeral was on behalf of the Communist newspaper Le Soir and they also commissioned Alberto Giacometti to create a monument for her in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

The Soviet newspaper Pravda wrote: "Millions and millions of women, when they decide to take a stand against fascism, will remember brave little Gerda." There was even a bubble-gum card produced that featured "pretty Gerda Taro" dying underneath a Republican Tank. On the reverse in capital letters it said 'To know the HORRORS OF WAR is to want PEACE.'

Gerda Taro had died in Spain covering the Battle of Brunete during the second year of the Spanish Civil War - a war eventually won by the Nationalists some eighteen months later. But despite the grand funeral and being fêted as a brave and brilliant war photographer, as the years went by Taro slipped into obscurity - a fate not granted to her lover and partner Robert Capa, who would also die tragically in 1954 after he stepped on a landmine photographing for Life magazine in Thai-Binh, Indochina.