Photographs from the Legendary Mexican Suitcase

Photographs from the Legendary Mexican Suitcase at Les Rencontres d'Arles

Posted: 05 Jul 2011 07:39 PM PDT

ARLES, FRANCE - Sometimes, even in the world of photography, miracles happen. On 19 December 2007, three battered, commonplace cardboard boxes arrived at the International Center of Photography in New York. Within these boxes the so-called Mexican Suitcase was a treasure trove of photographic history believed lost since World War II: the legendary Spanish Civil War negatives of Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour (known as Chim). The Mexican Suitcase contained 126 rolls of film, mostly shot between May 1936 and spring 1939, that are an inestimable record of innovative war photography and of a definitive episode in Spanish history. The photographs include Capa's images of the Battle of Rio Segre, Chim's famous image of a woman nursing a baby at a land reform meeting in Estremadura, and Taros last photos at the Battle of Brunete where she was killed in 1937.