11/12 - The Mexican Suitcase

Score!  I stopped by at the ICP yesterday just to look through the Salgado exhibit and kill an hour waiting for a dinner date, and as usual I took a peek at the gift shop.  They had a few copies of their compilation of the Mexican Suitcase on sale for $20.

For the sake of clarity, what I bought was a 2-volume set of books that contain text, photos, and contact sheets from and regarding the Mexican Suitcase -- not the suitcase itself.  The books just happen to be packaged in a nice box with a handle.

What is the Mexican Suitcase?  To be honest, I'd only heard about it last week, from this video by Ted Forbes at The Art of Photography.  You'd probably learn more from Ted's video than you would from me, so I highly recommend you take a look.  It's a collection of lost negatives from the Spanish Civil War from David "Chim" Seymour, Gerta Taro, and my hero, Robert Capa, that only resurfaced relatively recently in 2007.  The story of what happened to the negatives after they were taken is as interesting as the photos themselves.

The best part of the story to me is how none of this would happen with digital.  The Mexican Suitcase was actually three wooden boxes full of film -- not an SD card or files that can be uploaded via satellite.  We definitely have it way better nowadays, but then this story would not have happened.  Capa was in Paris in 1939 when the Germans came.  He left, leaving the negatives in Paris with his darkroom manager, who took them and got on a bike to try and get them shipped to Mexico.  Along the way, something happened and he had to hand the Suitcase off to a Chilean guy he ran into on the street and tell him to take it to the Chilean consulate.

After a long blurry story, with the negatives disappearing and resurfacing repeatedly, they finally ended up almost 60 years later in the hands of Robert Capa's brother, Cornell, at the International Center of Photography, where they were restored and scanned.  The compilation I bought last night was the result of the ICP's conservation effort.

Robert Capa's name may sound familiar because I've mentioned him in several previous posts as a smooth motherfucker, total badass and all-around cool dude.  Yesterday, it happens, Ted also released a video about Robert Capa, so you should watch that.  Hopefully this doesn't come off as blog piggybacking -- I just ran into the Suitcase by coincidence yesterday, and I figured I'd save you any more of my Capa fanboying.