CAMERA - Italian Center for Photography presents the exhibition Robert Capa and Gerda Taro: photography, love, war in the rooms of the exhibition center in via delle Rosine in Turin from 14 February to 2 June 2024. Another great exhibition - after the solo exhibitions dedicated to Dorothea Lange and André Kertész - which recounts with around 120 photographs one of the crucial moments in the history of photography of the 20th century, the professional and emotional relationship between Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, which was tragically interrupted with the death of the photographer in Spain in 1937. She fled Nazi Germany, he emigrated from Hungary, Gerta Pohorylle and Endre – later Frenchised André – Friedmann (these were their real names) met in Paris in 1934, and the following year they fell in love, forming a partnership artistic and sentimental which leads them to frequent the cafés of the Latin Quarter but also to engage in photography and political struggle. In a Paris in great turmoil but invaded by intellectuals and artists from all over Europe, finding commissions is however increasingly difficult. To try to entice the publishers, Gerta invents the character of Robert Capa, a rich and famous American photographer who recently arrived on the continent, an alter ego with whom André will identify for the rest of his life. She also changes her name and takes on that of Gerda Taro.

The decisive year for both is 1936: in August they move towards Spain, to document the civil war underway between the republicans and fascists; the following month Capa will take the legendary shot of the Militiaman shot to death, while Gerda Taro takes her most iconic image, a militiawoman in training, gun pointed and high-heeled shoes, in an unprecedented point of view of the war made and represented by women . Together with these two icons, the photographers take many other shots, which testify to an intense participation in the event, both from the point of view of war reportage and from that of the daily life of the soldiers and the population who were dramatically victims of the conflict. Their photographs were published in the major newspapers of the time, from "Vu" to "Regards" to "Life", giving the couple - who often signed with a single initials, without distinguishing the author of the shot - a solid reputation and many job requests. During 1936 and 1937 the two moved between Paris and Spain, documenting for example the strikes in the French capital and the 1937 elections, which ended with the victory of the anti-fascist grouping of the Popular Front. But also the International Conference of Anti-Fascist Writers in Valencia, where Taro photographs characters such as André Malraux, Ilya Ehrenburg, Tristan Tzara, Anna Seghers.