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The Girl with the Leica EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 1 EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 2 EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 3 T H E G I R L W I T H T H E L E I C A EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 4 EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 5 Helena Janeczek THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 6 Europa Editions 214 West 29th Street New York, N.Y. 10001 www.europaeditions.com [email protected] This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Copyright © 2017 by Ugo Guanda Editore S.r.l. Via Gherardini 10, Milano Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol First Publication 2019 by Europa Editions try 4HISBOOKHASBEENTRANSLATEDWITHGENEROUSSUPPORTFROMTHE)TALIAN-INISTRYOF &OREIGN!FFAIRSAND)NTERNATIONAL#OOPERATION 1UESTOLIBROÒSTATOTRADOTTOGRAZIEAUNCONTRIBUTOPERLATRADUZIONEASSEGNATO DAL-INISTERODEGLI!FFARI%STERIEDELLA#OOPERAZIONE)NTERNAZIONALEITALIANO Translation by Ann Goldstein Original title: La ragazza con la Leica Translation copyright © 2019 by Europa Editions All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available ISBN 978-1-60945-547-7 Janeczek, Helena The Girl with the Leica Book design by Emanuele Ragnisco www.mekkanografici.com Cover photo © Robert Capa © International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos Prepress by Grafica Punto Print – Rome Printed in the USA EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 7 C O N T E N T S PROLOGUE COUPLES, PHOTOGRAPHS, COINCIDENCES #1 - 13 PART I WILLY CHARDACK Buffalo, New York, 1960 - 23 PART II RUTH CERF Paris, 1938 - 97 PART III GEORG KURITZKES Rome, 1960 - 175 EPILOGUE COUPLES, PHOTOGRAPHS, COINCIDENCES #2 - 264 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND NOTES - 299 PHOTO CREDITS - 301 ABOUT THE AUTHOR - 303 EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 8 EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 9 “She was clearly . the pretty girl you couldn’t help following, like destiny.” —GEORG KURITZKES Radio interview, 1987 Despite your death and scant remains, the hair that lay golden on your head, your smile, soft flower in the wind and the skip in your walk, dodging the bullets to capture scenes of battle, all still give us breath, Gerda. —LUIS PÉREZ INFANTE From “To Gerda Taro, Killed on the Brunete Front” EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 10 EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 11 T H E G I R L W I T H T H E L E I C A EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 12 EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 13 PROLOGUE COUPLES, PHOTOGRAPHS, COINCIDENCES #1 ver since you saw that photograph, you’ve been gazing at them, spellbound. They seem happy, very happy, and E they’re young, which is fitting for heroes. You couldn’t say good-looking, but you couldn’t deny it, whereas they don’t appear at all heroic. That’s because they’re laughing, a laugh that closes their eyes and exposes their teeth, a laugh that’s not photogenic but so frank it makes them glorious. He has horse teeth, bared to the gums. She doesn’t, but her canine protrudes into the cavity where the next tooth should be, with the charm of a small, attractive imperfection. The light EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 14 1 4 - H E L E N A J A N E C Z E K spreads over the white of his striped shirt, flows onto the woman’s neck. Her clear skin, the diagonal of the tendons molded by her profile against the chair back, and even the curved line of the armrests amplify the joyous energy released by that unison laugh. They could be in a square, but, sitting in those comfortable armchairs, they give the impression of being in a park, where the background blends into a thick curtain of leafy trees. You wonder, then, if the frame they have all to themselves might be the garden of a grand bourgeois villa, whose residents fled over the border when Barcelona became a hotbed of revolution. Now that cool spot under the trees belongs to the people: to those two laughing with their eyes closed. The revolution is an ordinary day on which you go out to stop the coup that intends to suppress it, but you pause anyway to celebrate. Wearing the mono azul like a summer suit, putting a tie on under the overalls, wishing to appear handsome in the eyes of the other. Of no use here the mastodon of a gun, which has passed through the hands of countless soldiers before get- ting to the anarchist militiaman, who now can’t touch the lumi- nous neck of his woman. Apart from that obstacle, they’re free of everything at this moment. They’ve already won. If they keep laughing like that, if they go on being so happy, knowing how to get a shot out of that old firearm doesn’t seem too urgent. Those who are in the right will win. Now they can enjoy the sun tempered by the broadleaf trees, the presence of the beloved. The world should know. It must see in the blink of an eye that on one side is the centuries-old war, the generals disem- barking from Morocco with fierce mercenary troops, on the other people who want to defend the lives they have, who want one another. In that early August of 1936, a lot of people are arriving in EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 15 T H E G I R L W I T H T H E L E I C A - 1 5 Barcelona to join the first population in Europe to take up arms against fascism. They describe the city in chaos in the uni- versal language of images, which leap from the pages displayed on the newsstands of half the world, hung up in party and union headquarters, waved by newsboys, reused to wrap eggs and produce—images that leap in the faces even of those who don’t buy or read newspapers. The people of Barcelona welcome as brothers the foreign- ers who’ve come to fight by their side, and are getting used to that Babel of volunteers wandering all over the place, savoring the greeting compañero, compañera, then getting help from ges- tures, onomatopoetic sounds, pocket dictionaries. The photog- raphers, who aren’t waiting for weapons and training, are part of that continual flow to the volunteer militias. They’re here for us, they’re like us, comrades: those who see them on the job understand and let them work. But the two militiamen in the photograph, enthralled by their own laughter, don’t notice anything. Whoever is taking the picture moves, shoots again, risks giving himself away to take a closer shot of the couple united by the broad, intimate smile. This photograph is almost identical to the first, except that here the man and woman are obviously so enraptured that they EE THE GIRL WITH THE LEICA def_ABATE The Homecoming Party.qxd 25/07/19 19:19 Pagina 16 1 6 - H E L E N A J A N E C Z E K don’t care about the life around them. The scissor-like steps that cut the pavement behind them, revealing that they’re not in a park but maybe even on the Ramblas, where the city, mobilizing, gathers. The neighboring chair, where another woman is sitting. Of her head you see only a tuft of curly hair, of her body only a covered arm. You’d need her gaze, the gaze of someone who has seen up close what you can deduce from the images but can’t see with your eyes. The photographer who has captured the two comrades isn’t alone. There’s a man and a woman, positioned on the right side of the street, one beside the other. Then you discover the photo- graph of a woman sitting in the same armchairs, and you find it hard to believe that such brazen good luck can exist. Until, in the upper right, you notice a sliver of the profile of the young mili- tiaman who in the other photo- graphs is smiling ecstatically at his blond girl. This worker, holding a fash- ion magazine in her discordant hands and a gun between her legs, doesn’t really seem the type to be seized by gossipy curiosity about a couple of photographers who, after com- peting to capture the noisy laughter of the comrades in love, immortalize her as well. No, you say to yourself, someone like that sees and doesn’t see the things that don’t concern her.
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