The Mexican Suitcase: Photos (by Chim, Capa, and Taro) of Spanish Civil War recovered & on display

[pampango]

http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/story.html

In late December 2007, three small cardboard boxes arrived at the International Center of Photography from Mexico City after a long and mysterious journey. These tattered boxes—the so-called Mexican Suitcase—contained the legendary Spanish Civil War negatives of Robert Capa. ... When, at last, the boxes were opened for the 89-year-old Cornell Capa, they revealed 126 rolls of film—not only by Robert Capa, but also by Gerda Taro and David Seymour (known as "Chim"), three of the major photographers of the Spanish Civil War. Together, these roles of film constitute an inestimable record of photographic innovation and war photography, but also of the great political struggle to determine the course of Spanish history and to turn back the expansion of global fascism.

We have determined that the film rolls in the Mexican Suitcase break down roughly into a third each by Chim, Capa, and Taro. Almost all of the film is from the Spanish Civil War, taken between May 1936 and spring 1939. There are two exceptions: two rolls of film by Fred Stein taken in Paris in late 1935, which include both the famous image of Gerda Taro at a typewriter and the picture of Taro and Capa at a café, and another two rolls from Capa's trip to Belgium in May 1939. It is not immediately apparent why these four rolls were packed with the work from Spain.

The Suitcase does not contain a complete collection of any of Capa's, Taro's, or Chim's Spanish Civil War coverage, but includes many of the important stories. From Capa, we see images of destroyed buildings in Madrid, the Battle of Teruel, the Battle of Rio Segre, and the mobilization for the defense of Barcelona in January 1939, as well as the mass exodus of people from Tarragona to Barcelona and the French border. There are several rolls of Capa's coverage of the French internment camps for Spanish refugees in Argelès-sur-Mer and Barcarès taken in March 1939. We have found Chim's famous image of the woman nursing a baby during a land reform meeting in Estremadura taken in May 1936, as well as his portraits of Dolores Ibárruri, known as La Pasionaria. There are many images of his coverage of the Basque country and the Battle in Oviedo. From Taro, we have dynamic images of the new People's Army training in Valencia, the Navacerrada Pass on the Segovia front, and her last photographs taken while covering the Battle of Brunete, where she was killed on July 25, 1937.

The negatives contained in the so called Mexican Suitcase were discovered among General Aguilar's effects by the Mexican filmmaker Benjamin Tarver, which he inherited after the death of his aunt who was a friend of the General. After seeing an exhibition of Spanish Civil War work by Dutch photojournalist Carel Blazer in Mexico City, Tarver contacted Queens College professor Jerald R. Green in February 1995 seeking advice on how to catalogue the material and make it accessible to the public. "Naturally it would seem prudent to have this material...become an archive available to students and researchers of the Spanish Civil War," Tarver wrote Green, a friend of Cornell Capa, contacted Cornell and told him of this letter.

[ananda]

1. Wow.

Those pictures are fantastic, particularly the ones of the falling soldier
and the women and children... so moving.

[Baalath]

2. Thank you for sharing this.

Spent a part of my summer on the Mexico-Guatemalan border. Wonderful to see the old photos.