Gerda Taro - First Female War Photographer

For a young women, like  Gerda Pohoryll, who had grown up in a German Jewish family in the midst of World War II,  being in a war zone was no foreign experience . After Gerda's arrest in 1933 for distributing Anti-Nazi propaganda, the Pohoryll family fled Germany for Paris, where a stroke of luck lead Gerda to find the job that would become her passion.

Where Anti- Nazi propaganda had once been the tools of her opposition, the camera would become her ultimate statement of truth and protest. Finding a job as a picture editor for  Allied Photo she met and fell in love with Andre Friedman, an Allied Photo photographer. Together the two photographed the first ever images of war that the world had seen, but selling that work as a woman and both as Jews was more than difficult. Together, they invented the famous war photographer, Robert Capa, whose work did sell. The secret of their true identities didn't last long, but by then, the strength of their work stood on its own and had opened the world's eyes to the true nature and horrors of war.

It was then that Gerda assumed the last name of Taro and Andre that of Capa. Together Gerda Taro and Andre Capa left war torn France for Spain, then in the middle of a civil war that would put General Franco in power for the next 35 years.  In an unprecedented move, the two risked their lives daily to capture on film the lives lived and lost in the battle.  It was in 1937 during the Battle of Valencia, a confrontation of which the world knew not the realities on the ground, that became her most famous. For they revealed with accuracy the struggle for power between the Republican's and the Nationalist's. It was in covering that battle that Gerda sustained fatal wounds dying of her injuries on July 26, 1937. She had become not only the first woman to become a war photographer but also the first women to die as one.

Andre Capa went on to photograph more of the war in Europe, his most famous being the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy. Many years later a suitcase was found in Mexico packed with film from both Taro and Capa. Their images live on today and remind us of not only the horrors of war but of their bravery in showing the reality of war to the world.

Margaret Brown - "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."

When Margaret Brown (nee Tobin) was born in July of 1867, the Civil War had just ended and the country was still reeling from the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution had recently been adopted putting an end to slavery and providing equal protection under the law to everyone including then freed slaves. It was a perfect time for the powerhouse that was Margaret Brown to be alive. The world was thriving in innovations that we take for granted today. Thomas Edison had invented both the phonograph and the lightbulb when Margaret was just a young girl, the first transcontinental railroad was build across the United States and Henry Ford had just introduced the assembly line. But for all the advancements the country had seen and progress made towards equality for African American's, the late 1800's and early 1900's saw the degradation of rights and equality for both women and Native Americans. 

Margaret Brown has, to the modern era, become best known for being the most famous survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic. While she helped survivor's escape the sinking behemoth, her greatest work in that capacity was on the rescue ship, the Carpathia where she organized the Survivor's Committee, raising over $10,000 for survivors. She also stayed on the ship until all Titanic survivors had received medical attention or were received by their families.  She used her new found fame after the tragedy to catapult her life 's work which  was ultimately devoted to women, children, and the destitute. Following her adult siblings from their home state of Missouri to Leadville, Colorado, "Maggie" helped to lead the first women's suffrage movement in the state, founding the National American Women's Suffrage Association and the Denver Women's Club, the latter which promoted literacy, education, women's  suffrage and human rights. She also organized the first International Women's Rights Conference in Rhode Island in 1914, which was attended in great numbers by people from all over the world just two years after surviving the Titanic disaster.

Coming from meager beginnings and having married a man of little means, Margaret was no stranger to a humble life. When her husband, a mine worker in the Leadville mines, suggested an innovation to the mining process that lead to massive success, he was rewarded substantially, thus making the family quite wealthy. From her newfound position, Maggie worked to help those less fortunate by working in the miner's soup kitchen, helped to found a catholic church and hospital as well as the country's first Juvenile Court, which our current system is based upon.

Being an outspoken advocate for gaining women's right to vote, Margaret set her sights on elected office, running for the U.S. Senate eight years before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment which granted women the right to vote. She also worked during World War I to help restore devastated parts of France and was hence given the French Legion of Honor, all this while raising two children!

And I think I've got too much on my plate :)

Margaret Brown lived until October 26, 1932 where she passed away in  New York after a power packed 66 years of life.