Google is honoring Gerda Taro, the first female war photographer who worked on the front lines, with a special Google logo. The doodle captures Gerda Taro on a black-and-white film strip.
Gerda Taro died while on the front lines shooting the Republican army retreat at the Battle of Brunete of the Spanish Civil War. She died on July 26, 1937, right before her 27th birthday, in El Escorial, Spain.
Gerda was born in Stuttgart, Germany, but when Adolf Hitler was appointed the chancellor of Germany in 1933, her Jewish family fled to France.
Google wrote this beautiful tribute to her life on the Doodle page:
Though she was tiny in stature, Gerda Taro had the heart of a giant. Known as “the little red fox,” the ginger-haired photographer fearlessly turned her camera lens to capture sensitive and critical images of conflict around the world, producing powerful black-and-white images that informed readers of the newspaper Ce Soir. In fact, Taro is considered to be the first female journalist in the world to cover the front lines of conflict.
Born on this day in 1910 in Stuttgart, Germany, Taro moved to France shortly after Adolf Hitler was appointed the chancellor of Germany 1933. In Paris she met Robert Capa, a fellow refugee three years her junior who taught her the basics of photography. They became friends, changed their names (she was originally named Gerta Pohorylle), and were enamored for a time. Capa would go on to co-found the Magnum Photo agency while Taro became known for her fearless reportage. “The troops loved her and she kept pushing,” said Taro’s biographer Jane Rogoyska. “Capa warned her not to take so many risks.”
Though many of her images were misattributed to Capa, Taro became a household name in the few years of her reporting.
The doodle can be found in these regions of Google.com: Argentina, Australia, Chile, China, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.