Do not spray into eyes
I have sprayed you into my eyes
Not an obscure song, but still interesting lyrically and musically.
The song is titled after war photographer Gerda Taro and follows her partner, Robert Capa, who was also a war photographer and famous for being the only civilian photographer to land with the Allies on D-Day.
Both Taro and Capa were politically left and both Jewish, which led to both of them fleeing Nazi Germany for Paris. They each had sympathy for the Republicans (the anti-fascist and socialist side) in the Spanish Civil War. Capa followed the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification during that war, and his first professional photo was of Leon Trotsky giving a lecture in Copenhagen. Capa would later travel to the post-war Soviet Union with American author John Steinbeck. Some of Capa’s early works were likely produced by Taro under his name.
Taro died at only 26 in Spain in 1937 while photographing the Republican retreat in the Spanish Civil War. Later in 1954, Capa died stepping on a land mine in Vietnam, which is the basis of the plot in Alt-J’s song.
[CW] Some of their photography can be found below. Nothing too shocking but they do feature war zones.
