One of the most courageous female photojournalists of the 20th century, and the first known woman to lose her life while documenting armed conflict, Gerda Taro spent much of her career—and the decades after her death—eclipsed by the man she worked alongside and loved. Yet a fresh film and emerging scholarship are now repositioning her as an independent artist whose contributions have been systematically undervalued.
The new biopic The Girl With the Leica, directed by Italian filmmaker Alina Marazzi, had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 2 September 2026 in the Orizzonti section. The timing coincides with renewed claims from researchers that Taro, not her partner, may have captured the most celebrated and disputed photograph ever credited to their shared alias: a shot of a Spanish militiaman at the moment of death during the civil war.
Born Gerta Pohorylle in Stuttgart in 1910, Taro came from a middle-class Jewish family, as did her future collaborator Endré Friedmann, who was born in Budapest three years later. Both fled to Paris as Nazism rose across Europe, where they encountered other influential figures including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, and Willy Brandt, who would later serve as West Germany's first postwar social democratic chancellor.
It was Taro who conceived the professional name under which they would work—Robert Capa, a moniker designed to evoke a seasoned, hard-drinking American war correspondent and to command higher fees from publications. The name also referenced the Hungarian word cápa, meaning shark.
From 1936 through 1937, the pair documented the Spanish civil war, with photographs by both appearing in Life and Picture Post magazines under the Capa byline. Taro's most recognizable series shows female militias training, including an arresting profile shot of a woman kneeling on one knee while gripping a pistol, dressed in overalls yet wearing high heels—an image that reflects the influence of Soviet avant-garde visual culture.
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,Marazzi explained.
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.
Who actually photographed the most famous image?
The authorship of a single photograph—titled The Death of a Militiaman or The Falling Soldier—has become the focal point of a broader reassessment of Taro's legacy. When Life magazine published the image in July 1937, its caption claimed to show the instant a Republican fighter was shot in the head by forces loyal to Francisco Franco near Córdoba, though this account has long been contested.
Fernando Penco Valenzuela, a Spanish historian, archaeologist, and archivist based in Córdoba who has devoted years to examining Capa's photographic archive, has conducted a technical analysis suggesting the image was captured using Taro's square-format Reflex-Korelle camera rather than Friedmann's rectangular 35mm Leica. On 8 September 2026, new expert claims emerged supporting this attribution.
A 2025 retrospective exhibition held in Madrid and curated by the agency Capa co-founded in 1947 acknowledged in its accompanying materials that while some prints of The Falling Soldier displayed rectangular dimensions, others bore proportions consistent with a 6x6 negative—the format produced by Taro's camera.
Penco's investigation pinpointed the photograph's location to the village of Espejo in the Cerro Muriano mountain range, near Córdoba in southern Spain, dated to 5 September 1936, early in the civil war. A photograph of Taro taken the day she and Friedmann arrived at Espejo shows her carrying the Reflex-Korelle, which she had purchased with her first earnings as a photographer.
By analyzing all photographs taken by both artists at Espejo, Penco found that images in square format consistently matched Taro's work, while rectangular ones matched Friedmann's. Since the militiaman photograph is square, Penco contends the logical conclusion is that Taro took it.
How is it possible that she didn't take the photo? I have no doubt about it whatsoever,he stated.
Penco's research also raises the possibility that the famous image 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 acknowledged the plausibility of Taro's authorship, noting that
we know that around the time the picture was taken, Capa and Taro were often taking pictures in the same places.The photograph appears in her film.
While it was standard practice for photographers to submit work under a collective or cooperative name, Penco suggested that the romantic relationship between Friedmann and Taro may have further muddied the attribution process.
What does the new film reveal about Taro's independence?
The Girl With the Leica, a 116-minute production, opens at a moment when both photographers have retreated to Paris as the Spanish conflict intensified. The film employs a time-jumping, impressionistic structure, weaving together archival photographs, Spanish civil war footage, and newsreels from Nazi Germany. German actor Emilia Schüle portrays Taro, while Aaron Altaras plays Friedmann, and Luna Wedler appears as Ruth Cerf.
Despite having invented the entire Robert Capa persona, Taro eventually developed what Marazzi describes as
a fierce need to be independent.In the film, the character playing Taro expresses her frustration:
The world sees only Capa, and I'm disappearing behind him.This realization prompts her decision to return to the Iberian peninsula to pursue her own photographic work.
Marazzi's approach draws on Helena Janeczek's novel of the same name, which served as the basis for the screenplay. The film's structure and visual language emphasize Taro's artistic vision and her struggle to establish herself as a distinct creative force rather than merely as Capa's partner or collaborator.
How did Taro's life end?
In July 1937, while photographing combat in the Brunete region near Madrid for the French communist newspaper Ce Soir, Taro was struck and crushed by a reversing Republican tank. She died at El Goloso hospital in El Escorial and was subsequently interred at Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, becoming the first female photojournalist known to have been killed while covering a war.
What comes next for this reassessment?
The Venice Film Festival's Orizzonti section ran through 12 September 2026, generating multiple reviews and critical responses immediately following the premiere. Reviewers described the film as a time-jumping, impressionistic biopic that uses archival material including Taro and Capa photographs, Spanish Civil War footage, and Nazi Germany newsreels. A Córdoba-based exhibition marking the 90th anniversary of The Falling Soldier is expected to generate further scholarly debate and public discussion around the photograph's true authorship during the 2026 commemoration period, with technical and documentary review pointing to the camera used in the image being Gerda Taro's Korelle Reflex.
Key Facts
- Gerda Taro (1910–1937) was born in Stuttgart as Gerta Pohorylle and co-created the Robert Capa alias with her partner Endré Friedmann to command professional respect and higher publication fees.
- Researchers now claim Taro, not Capa, photographed The Falling Soldier, based on technical analysis showing the image was shot on a square-format Reflex-Korelle camera rather than Friedmann's rectangular 35mm Leica.
- Taro was the first known female photojournalist to be killed while covering armed conflict, struck by a reversing Republican tank in July 1937 while documenting the Spanish civil war.
- The Girl With the Leica, directed by Alina Marazzi and starring Emilia Schüle, premiered at Venice on 2 September 2026 and explores Taro's struggle for artistic independence from the Capa identity she created.
