“The Girl with the Leica” book is now available as a biographical drama film screened at the 2026 Venice Film Festival. It is based on Helena Janeczek’s novel, which tells the true story of the woman behind the name Robert Capa. The Girl with the Leica reconstructs the brief, intense life of Gerda Taro (born Gerta Pohorylle) through the memories of three people who loved her, and at its center is the compact 35mm Leica that turned a German-Jewish refugee and anti-fascist activist into a war photographer. In 1930s Paris, her lover Endre Friedmann, soon to become Robert Capa, taught her to use the Leica. Together they invented the glamorous “Robert Capa” alias so newspapers would buy pictures from two penniless Central European Jews.
While Endre Friedmann/Robert Capa was a dedicated Leica (and later Contax) shooter, Gerda Taro actually shot many of her most famous early Spanish Civil War images on a medium-format Rolleiflex Standard (shooting square format). She didn’t switch to primarily using a 35mm Leica II (Model D) until roughly February 1937.
