War, Love and Photography
The Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and adjoining exhibits currently on display at the International Center of Photography are a forceful testament to the tragedy of war and the power of the photograph.
A collection of over 400 prints and negatives by pioneering photojournalist Andre Friedmann, who took the name Robert Capa, and his partner in love and work, Gerda Taro document the political and human history of the Spanish Civil War, events which consumed European and American intellectuals.
Among the silver gelatin prints mounted on the blood-red walls of the exhibit are images of Republican soldiers laden with heavy backpacks and artillery, men searching for wounded soldiers in clouds of dust and nearby explosions against serene country landscapes. As a tribute to the life that endures when nations go to war are photographs of a barber shop and agricultural workers in fields.
Recognizing the untapped power of photography, Capa and Taro had pushed beyond the limits of safety to expose the atrocities of war in a way that would sting more painfully than words printed in a newspaper. Raw and personal, the faces of widows, refugees and orphans humanize the statistics that civilians of war inevitably grow immune to. Photographs of the International Congress of Writers in Valencia and the intellectuals’ excursions to the war torn city capture the political dynamics that accompany every war.
More poignantly, bloody images, corpses piled two per gurney and the limp bodies of unclothed children are a truthful, unflinching account of a dangerous time. Complementing the photos of the Spanish Civil War, the Sino-Japanese War and World War II, is a smaller exhibit called, “Other Weapons” referring to the burgeoning power of photography in magazine montages and the profound political and social effects of a new print culture in the 1930s. Magazine covers with missiles aimed at children and a booted foot symbolically crushing a swastika had the power to ignite and mobilize nations. Old posters and newspapers from the Spanish Civil War awaken the viewer to the historical impact of images made possible by new technological changes in printing and distribution.
Photographer Gerda Taro’s death during the 1937 battle of Brunete serves as a final testament to her unwavering belief in the power of photography, and the importance of documenting what would otherwise be the unseen tragedies of war. The International Center of Photography exhibition is not only a visual history of war but an explicit reminder of the impact images bear on the human soul.