The Girl with the Leica
-
- 12,99 €
-
- 12,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
The life of a female war photographer killed in action is told by three of her friends in this biographical novel by the author of Bloody Cow.
Gerda Taro was a German-Jewish war photographer, anti-fascist activist, artist, and innovator who, together with her partner, the Hungarian Endre Friedmann, was one half of the alias Robert Capa, widely considered to be the twentieth century’s greatest war and political photographer. She was killed while documenting the Spanish Civil War and tragically became the first female photojournalist to be killed on a battlefield.
August 1, 1937, Paris. Taro’s twenty-seventh birthday, and her funeral. Friedmann leads the procession. He is devastated, but there are others, equally bereft, with him: Ruth Cerf, Taro’s old friend from Leipzig with whom she fled to Paris; Willy Chardack, ex-lover; Georg Kuritzkes, another lover and a key figure in the International Brigades. They have all known a different Gerda, and one who is at times radically at odds with the heroic anti-fascist figure being mourned by the multitudes . . .
Another character in the novel is the era itself, the 1930s, with economic depression, the rise of Nazism, hostility towards refugees in France, the century’s ideological warfare, the cultural ferment, and the ascendency of photography as the age’s quintessential art form.
Winner of the Strega Prize, The Girl with the Leica is a must-read for fans of historical fiction centered on extraordinary women’s lives.
“A biography, a feminist parable, a declaration of love for photography, and a tableau of the 1930s: The Girl with the Leica is all this at once.” —Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy)
“Janeczek creatively and seamlessly spotlights war photographer Gerda Pohorylle.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Janeczek creatively and seamlessly spotlights war photographer Gerda Pohorylle, known professionally as Gerda Taro, in this fictionalized account of her life. Gerda's short life (1910 1937) is chronicled from the viewpoint of the friends who knew her best; she was half of the alias Robert Capa, the photographer team of Gerda and her lover Andr Friedmann. While living in Buffalo, doctor Willy Chardack reminisces about Gerda when he receives a call in 1960 from another former lover, Georg Kuritzkes. Willy, known as "the Dachshund," spent time with Gerda in pre-WWII Paris, where he continued his university studies while Gerda learned how to use a camera and supported the antifascist cause. Ruth Cerf highlights her friendship with the effervescent Gerda, who was thrilled as her photography career began to take off in 1930s Paris. Yet tragically, Gerda's quest to rush into danger to photograph military action led to her death during the Spanish Civil War. Kuritzkes also remembers Gerda, the woman he once loved and who challenged him intellectually. Janeczek details the political unrest in pre-WWII Europe while instilling her novel with the indelible mark of Gerda's presence and photographic genius. Fans of historical fiction featuring strong, forward-thinking female characters will be enthralled.