the mexican suitcase

Currently, the International Center of Photography, in New York, is displaying The Mexican Suitcase exhibit. The exhibit contains photographs, with negatives included, of the Spanish Civil War, taken by three young photographers - Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and Chim. After the war ended in 1939, the negatives had been passed on from person to person in order to keep them protected, but then went missing for almost 70 years before turning up in Mexico in 2007.
 


According to the exhibit, these three photographers "laid the foundation for modern war photography." The photographs include shots from the battle field, images of soldiers, citizens, and political figures, and insight into how the war affected various parts of the country. The images are really fantastic; you almost feel like you were there, especially since almost all of them are candid and many capture what was going on behind the scenes. Many of these photographs had been published in national and international magazines during the war, sometimes with credit given, but many times lacking a photographer's name. Now that these negatives have been discovered, photos are matched up and credit can now be given to one of these three photographers.

One of the things I found most intriguing were the boxes of negatives themselves. Like a box of chocolates, the rolls of negatives are separated, each in their own little square, inside the box. On the inside of the lid, the photographers drew their own squares to match those holding the negatives, and hand wrote what each roll was of. The detail and time that goes into a project like that, compared to the way we quickly categorize our photographs today, is amazing. Not to mention the weight of lugging all those rolls around, rather than dumping them on your computer.