Photography | Fotoeins Fotografie

Stuttgart’s Gerda Taro

Travel day 76, Euro day 75.

I’m in Stuttgart for a few days, and I rediscover photographer Gerda Taro was born in the city. I’d already read some history of photography, including the Spanish Civil War and Gerda Taro as the first woman to photograph and publish images about open conflict. I’ve gone looking for some traces in the city of her birth, as a quick and spontaneous mini-project in the midst of 90 consecutive days in Europe.

Memorial, near Olgaeck

Near the bus and tram stop Olgaeck is Gerda Taro Plaza, in memory of the young woman photographer who was born “Gerta Pohorylle” in Stuttgart and who once lived with her family in the area. At the plaza is a 2014 memorial dedicated to Taro; the text on all nine panels is entirely in German.

*Named for photographer Gerda Taro (1910-1937), the plaza was unveiled by the city in 2008, and redesigned in 2014 with the installation of the memorial.*

*“O”. Gerda Taro, a pioneer in war photography.*

*“R”*. *The 1920s: Jazz, Theater, and the Stuttgart Kickers.*

*“A”*. *Leipzig: distributing leaflets against Hitler.*

*“T”. Exile in Paris: meeting André Friedmann, and the creation of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa. There is no Capa without Taro.*

*“A”. The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.*

*“D”. Barricades, armed women, equitable distribution of land.*

*“R”. The camera as witness: misery and terror from bombs.*

*“E”. Getting up close, for the world at large.*

“G”. The first woman war-photographer killed on location. Documenting Spain’s civil war with her camera, Gerda Taro was accidentally run over by a tank and died from her injuries in a hospital near Madrid on 26 July 1937. She was buried in a marked grave in Paris’ Cimetière du Père-Lachaise.

*Republican militia women training on the beach outside Barcelona, Spain: photo by Gerda Taro, August 1936. Provided by Ur Cameras on Flickr via Creative Commons.*

Family home

Not far from Gerda-Taro-Plaza, I found the Pohorylle family’s former home, based on this poignant essay. I didn’t see any Gedenktafel (memorial plaque) or any Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) in the pavement, at or in front of either building 170 or 170A. In 1929, when Gerta was 19 years old, the Pohorylle family moved from Stuttgart to Leipzig.

*Obstructed view of the former Pohorylle family house (in light orange), as seen from passage off Cottastrasse.*

*Gate to path access for building address Alexanderstrasse 170A.*

*Former Pohorylle family house, at Alexanderstrasse 170A.*

Taro, short bio

Born Gerta Pohorylle, 1910 in Stuttgart, Germany; died 1937 in El Escorial, Spain.

“… Studied in Leipzig starting in 1929. Emigrated to Paris in 1933. In 1935 began working with the photographer André Friedmann, later known as Robert Capa. In 1935-1936 worked for the Alliance Photo Agency. Shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the summer of 1936, she and Capa went to Spain; other photography assignments in Spain followed in early 1937. She was fatally wounded at the Brunete front in July 1937 and was the first female war correspondent killed in action.”

Source: “Women War Photographers: from Lee Miller to Anja Niedringhaus” (Munich: Prestel, 2019), p. 218.

I made all photos above with an iPhone15 on 22 Jul 2024. I received no support from an external organization. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

10 years, to the place where I died

Seems like yesterday: ten years have disappeared in a flash. And yet, a hint of grief is as fresh, now as it was then.

Before dawn, I swear I heard his voice calling out to me. The official pronouncement: 610am, 9 August 2014. Ken Lee, dead at 82. I was afraid I had already forgotten his voice.

Northern summer will always have an air of finality, tainted by memories of frailty and inevitability: entropy at its absolute finest.

One day, I’m on the well-travelled stretch between Mannheim and Cologne, fiddling between an online ticket for an express train and an online (Deutschland-) ticket for the next regional train.

The next day, I’m in a Vancouver cemetery on a late Friday afternoon. I see only two to three other visitors out here. It is almost mid-August. Sun’s out, it’s almost 30C. Somewhere outside of this green patch of stone, metal, and flowers, life thrives and goes on. For me, I’ve come back to get “stuck”; I might as well be 8000 km away, back on the other side of the planet.

*Up on the 10th floor is/was the palliative ward where Dad spent his final 2 weeks.*

I made the photos above with an iPhone15 on 9 Aug 2024. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

Sapperton: gatehouse & monument cairn

New Westminster

Within New Westminster’s Sapperton residential area at 319 Governors Court is the Gatehouse building of the former British Columbia Penitentiary (1878-1980); happily, the site is now home to a pub with patio. At the right edge of the picture below, the massive tower under construction is for the new Pattullo Bridge.

*In front of the gatehouse is this 1927 Govt. of Canada* 🇨🇦 *commemorative cairn in honour of the Royal Engineers (“Sappers”).*

“In 1859 military considerations induced Colonel Richard Moody* to select the site of New Westminster as capital of the new colony of British Columbia. Jointly developed until 1863 by civilians and the Royal Engineers, whose campground was here, the town, dominated by its Canadian^ middle-class, tried to challenge Victoria’s commercial and political power. Hopes rose when New Westminster became the seat of government after the colony’s union with Vancouver Island in 1866, but fell with the removal of the capital to Victoria in 1868. Consequently, union with Canada was advocated to solve the town’s fiscal problems.”

* after whom city of Port Moody is named

^ white British Empire colonists

I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 17 April 2024. Composed entirely within Jetpack for iOS, this post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-sjR.

New West actor Raymond Burr

Fraser Cemetery

As a boy whose early memories include the family’s small black-and-white television from the 1970s, I remember the tv show “Ironside.” Canadian-born Raymond Burr played the titular character of Robert Ironside, special consultant for the San Francisco police department. Years later in the mid- to late-1980s, Burr returned as Perry Mason, the lead from the 1960s weekly tv-drama revived as a popular series of made-for-tv movies. He died in 1993, buried with members of his family in Fraser Cemetery, at home in New Westminster, B.C.

*Burr family grave at lower-centre – 9 Apr 2024 (iP15).*

*Raymond Burr (lower-right), with sister Geraldine, father William, and mother Minerva – 9 Apr 2024 (iP15).*

In 1858, the British established New Westminster as first- and capital-city of the new colony of British Columbia. Fraser Cemetery accepted its first burials in 1869.

I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 9 April 2024. Composed entirely within Jetpack for iOS, this post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-sjD.

A mobile test

This Heading is H4

I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to create a post on mobile, independently of laptop or desktop. The present example is a text block that goes before an image.

*“The* *Sappers* *were here” (www); photo on 13 Apr 2024 (iP15). Example of inserted image block.*

This is an example of a text block after an image; in this case, it’s at night across Brunette Avenue from Sapperton SkyTrain station in New Westminster, BC.

While I might add a few thoughts about image and context of its time and place, further lack of customization (e.g., access to shortlink, modified edit-defaults via desktop, etc.) emphasizes the simplicity to the swift overall process of content creation and snobbery by sidestepping users’ own creative process to content creation.

I made the image above with an iPhone15 on 13 April 2024. Composed entirely within Jetpack for iOS, this post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-siu.

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