Remembering Capa: Spain and the Legacy of Gerda Taro, 1936-37

Press photographs are the public memory of their times; their presence in the public sphere has contributed significantly to the pictures in our heads on which we rely for a better understanding of the world.Some photographs have a special appeal, or an extraordinary power, which makes them icons of a particular era.They stand for social or political events and evoke the spirit of a period in history.They also help define our attitudes towards people or nations and, therefore, are important sources of emotional and intellectual power.War photography, in particular, renders imagery of this kind and easily becomes a source of propaganda as well.The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) was the European testing ground for new weapons strategies by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.Both aided their respective sides in the struggle between a Popular Front governmentsupported mainly by left-wing parties, workers, and an educated middle class-and "Nationalist" forces supported by conservative interests, the military, clergy, and landowners.The conflict resulted in about 500,000 deaths, thousands of exiles, and in a dictatorship that lasted until Franco's death in 1975.It was a time when large-scale antifascist movements such as the Republican army, the International Brigades, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, and anarchist militias (the Iron Column) united in their struggle against the military rebellion led by Francisco Franco.Foreigners joined the International Brigade, organized in their respective units, e.g., the Lincoln Battalion (USA), the British Battalion (UK), the Dabrowski Battalion (Poland), the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (Canada), and the Naftali Botwin Company (Poland and Spain, including a Jewish unit).As a major European political event, the conflict attracted many foreign journalists and photographers, like Hans Namuth and Georg Reisner working for Vu.Along with their Spanish colleagues, most notably Agust Centelles, they meticulously documented the struggle between Republicans and rebels, adding to the creative efforts of antifascists like George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia) and Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls),

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