‘A fierce need to be independent’: Gerda Taro biopic pulls photographer out of lover Robert Capa’s shadow

She was one of the most fearless female photojournalists of the 20th century, and the first known to have been killed while covering a war. But in life and in death, the work of Gerda Taro has often been overshadowed by the collaborator and lover whose alias she invented and sometimes shared: Robert Capa.

That may be about to change with a new biopic that seeks to pull the pioneering photographer from out of Capa’s shadow, which is premiering at the Venice film festival just as researchers claim to have proof that his most famous and controversial picture was actually taken by her.

Taro and Capa were both from middle-class Jewish families – she born in 1910 in Stuttgart under the name Gerta Pohorylle, he three years later in Budapest as Endré Friedmann.

Terrified by the rise of Nazism, the two aspiring photojournalists fled to Paris, where their paths crossed and they mingled with other luminaries including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and Willy Brandt, who would later become Germany’s first postwar social democrat chancellor.

It was Taro who came up with a brand name redolent of a seasoned, hard-drinking American war reporter, which they hoped would command respect (cápa also meaning “shark” in Hungarian) and higher fees.

Between 1936 and 1937, the pair covered the Spanish civil war, with pictures taken by both of them published under their alias in the Life and Picture Post magazines.

“Gerda Taro both captured the early phase of the Spanish civil war that was still full of optimism and hope, and the tragic final stages,” said Alina Marazzi, the Italian director of the new film La Ragazza Con la Leica (“The Girl With the Leica”), based on Helena Janeczek’s novel of the same name. “She was one of the first women to take pictures from the battlefront, but she also captured the consequences the war had for ordinary people, for women and for children.”

Taro’s most widely known series of photographs depicts female militias on a shooting range, one of them shown in iconic profile: kneeling on one knee while steadying a pistol, wearing an overall but also high heels. “It’s such an incredible picture, clearly showing the influence of the Soviet avant garde,” said Marazzi.

The showcasing of the feature film in the Venice Lido is taking place amid fresh questions over the most famous photograph to be credited to the Robert Capa alias, which researchers claim may have been taken by Taro and not Capa, as hitherto thought.

The Death of a Militiaman gained fame when Life magazine published it in July 1937, with a caption stating that it showed the moment a Republican fighter was shot in the head by Francisco Franco’s forces near Córdoba – a claim that has since been contested.

Fernando Penco Valenzuela, a Spanish historian, archaeologist and archivist in the city of Córdoba who has spent years studying Capa’s work, said a technical analysis of the photo – also known as The Falling Soldier – suggests it was in fact shot by Taro’s square-format Reflex-Korelle rather than Friedmann’s rectangular-format 35mm Leica.

A 2025 Madrid retrospective curated by Magnum, the agency Capa co-founded in 1947, stated in a caption that although some prints of The Falling Soldier were rectangular, the dimension of others suggested the negative “came from a 6x6 camera”.

Penco’s research pins down the location where the picture was taken to the village of Espejo in the Cerro Muriano mountain range, on the front near Córdoba in southern Spain on 5 September 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish civil war.

In a photograph of Taro the day the couple arrived at Espejo, she is seen wearing the Reflex-Korelle, the camera she bought with her first pay cheque as a photographer.

An analysis of the pictures taken by both photographers in Espejo attributes all of the square-format photos to Taro and the rectangular ones to Friedmann. As the militiaman picture is square, Penco argues that it is therefore logical to assume it, too, was taken by Taro.

“How is it possible that she didn’t take the photo?” he told the Guardian. “I have no doubt about it whatsoever.”

Penco’s findings also fuel speculation that the famous picture may have been staged. “As there was no fighting in the area when it was taken, in my opinion the photo was staged,” he said.

Marazzi said it was plausible that Taro took The Falling Soldier picture, which is shown in her film. “We know that around the time the picture was taken, Capa and Taro were often taking pictures in the same places.”

Penco said that while it was commonplace at the time for photographers to file in the name of their group or cooperative, the fact that Friedmann and Taro were a couple may have further complicated their attribution.

The Girl With the Leica opens at a point where Taro (played by the German actor Emilia Schüle) and Friedmann (played by Aaron Altaras) have retreated back to Paris because the civil war in Spain has become too dangerous. But Taro is restless.

“Even though it was her who invented the entire Robert Capa persona, there was a point where she developed a fierce need to be independent,” said Marazzi.

“The world sees only Capa, and I’m disappearing behind him,” the actor playing Taro says in the film, before deciding to return to the Iberian peninsula to take more pictures.

In July 1937, Taro was photographing fighting in the Brunete region near Madrid for the French communist newspaper Ce Soir when she was run over and crushed by a reversing Republican tank. She died at El Goloso hospital in El Escorial and was later buried at Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.