“But she soon learned how to incorporate the Valencian che into her vocabulary, and people immediately wanted to adopt her. There are people who, without even trying, are automatically loved. It’s something you’re born with, like the way you laugh as you tell a joke in a low voice. Gerda was one of those people. She could interpret each accent with the fluency of a musician improvising a new melody. Pronounce swear words with such elegant grace that she could seduce anyone. She listened with her head slightly tilted to the side, a complicit air about her, like a mischievous child. Within the feminine canon, she wasn’t especially pretty, but the war had given her a different kind of beauty; that of a survivor. “
(Currently loving Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes)
Photo: “Gerda Taro, Guadalajara Front, Spain,” July 1937, by an unknown photographer. Ms. Taro, seen by many as the first woman known to photograph a battle from the front lines and to die covering a war, survived in the public eye mostly for her romance with Robert Capa. (source: NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/21/arts/20070922_TARO_SLIDESHOW_2.html)
