A biopic with a buried detail

Alina Marazzi's The Girl with the Leica premiered at Venice this month. Reviewers argued about the dance numbers and the love triangles. The real story is about a credit line.

Two photographers, one war

Gerda Taro fled Nazi Germany. Andre Friedmann was a Hungarian Jewish emigre. In the 1930s they covered the Spanish Civil War side by side.

They invented a man

Jewish names hurt their sales, so they built a byline that didn't have one. Robert Capa was American, glamorous and completely fictional.

“Confident, glamorous and entirely fictional”

The market bought it

Picture editors paid better for Capa. Readers believed in him. Fees went up and assignments followed, exactly as the pair had gambled.

“Picture editors bought it, readers bought it and eventually history bought it, too”

Taro died at 26

She was run over by a tank during the retreat from Brunete in 1937. Friedmann kept the name and became one of the century's most famous photojournalists.

Seventy years in his archive

A large share of Taro's frames sat filed under Friedmann's name, quietly growing his legend. Nobody after the war felt moved to fix it.

“A byline is supposed to be a matter of fact. Here it was more like a marketing decision”

Three boxes in Mexico City

In 2007 negatives lost for decades resurfaced. Historians examined them frame by frame and worked out which camera, hers or his, had shot each picture.

Still out of reach

One review says the film's impressionistic style keeps Taro distant even while trying to restore her. It shows next at Filmfest Hamburg on September 29.

“beyond our reach”