Barcelona Skyline

Monday 22 June 2009

Shots from the civil war: Robert Capa & Gerda Taro




From July 7 to September 27 the MNAC (Museu Nacional d´Art de Catalunya) will present the exhibition "Això es la guerra!" (This is war!), with the simultaneous shows by Robert Capa, “the greatest war photographer in the world”, and his brilliant, vivacious girlfriend Gerda Taro, another pioneer in photojournalism.

Robert Capa is the gold standard for all photojournalists. His most famous image “Death of a Militiaman”,“the greatest of all war photographs”, shows an anti-Franco militiaman collapsing into death after being shot in the heart. This and about 200 other war photographs from World War II, the first Israeli-Arab War, and the Indochinese War form “This is War! Robert Capa in Action” an exposition which will finally will reach Barcelona after touring New York, London, and Milan.

A simultaneous exhibition by Gerda Taro assembles 83 of her photographs along with other documentary material. Her extraordinary sensibility and ability to capture the intimate and immediate during the horrifying depersonalization of war was cut tragically cut short when she was mortally injured during the Battle of Brunette in 1937.

This is your chance to view their extraordinary body of work. You can feel their passionate commitment, their willingness to share the hardships of the people they were photographing and their extraordinary ability to keep their ideals without losing respect for individuals.

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