In 1979, the brother of a famous
photographer wrote a note about his late brother's work on the
occassion of that work being featured in the Venice Bienalle,
arguably the world's most famous art show, held every two years in
Venice, Italy.
He said
In 1940, before the advance of the German army, my brother gave to one of his friends a suitcase full of documents and negatives. En route to Marseilles, he entrusted the suitcase to a former Spanish Civil War soldier, who was to hide it in the cellar of a Latin-American consulate. The story ends here. The suitcase has never been found despite the searches undertaken. Of course a miracle is possible. Anyone who has information regarding the suitcase should contact me and will be blessed in advance.
Four
years earlier, in 1975, a colleague of the photographer wrote the brother and
explained that he had taken the negatives out of Paris in advance of
the Germans and had entrusted it to a Chilean he had met in the
street in Bordeaux who promised to take it to a Latin American
consulate. Nothing more was ever heard. It was assumed that the
photographs were lost forever and presumably destroyed.
But
it turns out that somehow, no one knows how, the suitcase, unopened,
ended up in the possession of a the Mexican ambassador to Vichy
France in 1941, General Francisco Aguilar Gonzalez. General
Gonzalez returned to Mexico with the suitcase in his possession and
passed away 30 years later, in 1971, possibly without having ever
opened it. The suitcase was in the possessions of a woman who was
the aunt of a Mexican documentary filmmaker. He inherited the
suitcase, opened it, and reviewed the negatives. He realized that
they were of the Spanish Civil War and contacted a professor at Queens College who studied the history of the conflict. The
professor realized whose photographs these were, and contacted the
brother of the late photographer.
But
Capa was unable to contact the filmmaker who had found the negative
and they were never received. Finally in 2004 a special effort was
made to locate the person who had inherited the negatives and in
2007, at the
age of 89, Cornell Capa finally received the contents of the suitcase his brother had packed in Paris when the Germans attacked in 1940.
The
126 rolls of black and white negative are still being scanned and the
ICP will hold an exhibition for them when they are prepared.
The guy in the center is a journalist named Ernest Hemingway
We
must all be grateful that Capa and his friends had used film, of
course. Had they been digital, no doubt they would not have
survived. The storage media would have completely disintegrated
over 60 years, it would be like trying to read a 1,000 miles of
punched paper tape.
The
complete story of the history of the Mexican suitcase can be found at
the following link, at the International Center of Photography
website: http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/
Magnum
Photos, the famous international photography agency, has a discussion
of Capa at
Imaging Resource Article on the Suitcase:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/04/05/famed-photojournalist-robert-capa-and-the-mystery-of-his-mexican-suitcase
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/04/05/famed-photojournalist-robert-capa-and-the-mystery-of-his-mexican-suitcase
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