IF your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough, Robert Capa advised fellow war photographer Gerda Taro. Capa would go on to international recognition, whereas Taro, his equal as a pioneer in photojournalism, would be forgotten, killed in action.

Now, however, Oxford touring theatre company Idle Motion have devised and written Shooting With Light, an exploration of the “complex relationship between photography and memory” that sheds light on one of the 20th century’s great unsung ground-breakers.

Kate Stanley’s production arrives at Pocklington Arts Centre tomorrow with a story that begins in 1933 when a young German refugee flees to Paris, reinventing herself as Gerda Taro. Discovering the wonder of photography, she falls in love with fellow refugee Capa and together they venture to the Spanish Civil War to capture the tyranny of fascism.

“It’s difficult to say precisely why Gerda Taro has been forgotten,” says Idle Motion cast member Grace Chapman. “There are lots of different factors that contribute to it. Robert Capa became this iconic war photographer figure, possibly the best. Gerda was the great love of his life and only photographed for a year in Spain, in 1936-1937, and so she had only a small body of work as she perished in the Civil War aged only 26.”

Gerda Taro was the first woman to die photographing on the Front Line. “When she died, Gerda was a bit of a darling of the Spanish Civil War, and there was a big state funeral in Paris where 10,000 attended, but the Second World War trumped attention, and now, if she is remembered, it is as Robert Capa’s girlfriend,” says Grace.

“That’s why we wanted to bring out Gerda’s story because it’s such a fantastic story: their amazing relationship and the way they worked together to build up this figure of Robert Capa.”

There has been one book on the subject in recent years: Jane Rogoyska’s 2013 work Gerda Taro: Inventing Robert Capa.

“We got in touch with Jane to ask her questions because there’s not a lot known about Gerda,” says Grace. “She’s been on hand to be our consultant and that’s been useful because there are no letters, no diaries, no voice recordings, no film, just still photographs and Gerda’s photographs, so we felt we needed Jane to help us with historical accuracy as we trace Gerda’s journey.”

What struck Grace most about Gerda’s story? “Most of her photographs were lost, in a suitcase, between 1938 and 2007. After she died in 1937, all of her photographs, and some of Robert’s, were cycled out of Paris to Bordeaux and then sent to Mexico, because a lot of Spanish refugees were going there,” she says.

“In 2007, Robert Capa’s brother, Cornell, put out an appeal for this missing suitcase of negatives and it turned up in Mexico City in the back of a small wardrobe. Without that suitcase being found, her photos would have been lost to the world; they are the key to the story and to Capa and Gerda’s relationship.”

• Idle Motion presents Shooting With Light, Pocklington Arts Centre, tomorrow, 7.30pm. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk