ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how self-reflexivity about personal motivations has helped to lend shape to war photographers’ evolving embodiment of their craft since the mid-nineteenth century. It aims to discuss reverse accustomed emphases placed on men photographers in historical treatments, pinpoints how women have negotiated such tensions in fulfilling reportorial priorities. The chapter identifies pertinent developments occurring from the last decade of the nineteenth century through to the 1960s, the crucial period during which prevailing conceptions of war photography as a masculine pursuit were forged. The en/gendered significance of war photography invite a countervailing heuristic. For women civilian photographers denied official accreditation, further possibilities emerged, including being commissioned by the armed forces for particular assignments. The first woman war photographer killed in the field is widely considered to be Gerda Taro, who was accidently crushed by a reversing Republican tank on July 25, 1937, the last day of the Battle of Brunete during the Spanish Civil War.
