An incredible story.

The Mexican Suitcase refers to three boxes of negatives taken by Gerda Caro, Robert Capa and Chim Seymour (the last two, along with HC-B and George Rodger the founders of Magnum) during the Spanish Civil War which were long thought lost. When they surfaced a few years back and ended up donated by the owner to ICP in New York, still run by Capa’s brother Cornell, the content created an international photographic sensation.

Mercifully Capa’s darkroom technician had an obsessive personality which saw him create three neat boxes with dividers and exquisite inscriptions. Today, were he alive, he would doubtless be writing tedious articles arguing the relative merits of one overpriced MF digital back over another; he would no more be taking pictures now than then. But we should all be grateful for this darkroom jockey’s attention to detail.

The documentary, available on Netflix and Amazon VOD, is a tad idiosyncratic, struggling to keep a well defined story line, but the story is none the less thrilling for all that. Just how the negatives ended up in Mexico and the story of that nation’s special hospitality to many who would otherwise have been chewed up by Franco’s killing machine, is gripping.

The inside cover of one of the three boxes in the Mexican Suitcase.

Taro was killed in the Spanish Civil War, Capa and Chim were both killed in later war zones.

Taro and Capa.

What truly distinguishes the images in this documentary is their startling immediacy. War photography had never been done like this before, the photographer indistinguishable from the soldier save that he had a camera in lieu of a gun.

If you want to see an excellent recreation of what Capa’s style must have been like, I recommend Hemingway and Gellhorn about the time the title characters spent in the Civil War.

Here’s a typical image from the documentary – I’m uncertain which of the three took it:

The first photographer of the American West.

Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882) was the official photographer of the US Geological Exploration of the newly explored American West in the 1870s, having been a journeyman on Matthew Brady’s staff photographing the killing fields of the American Civil War.

Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 1873.

Unlike the later images of Ansel Adams, these are mercifully not crassly over processed. Just straight prints which do the land due justice.

White House ruins, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 1873.

O’Sullivan used the wet collodion process which necessitates the taking of the picture with a freshly coated, wet glass plate in the camera. Once dry it loses its light sensitivity. It’s not clear how sensitive the film was but judging from O’Sullivan’s images of posed groups he was probably using exposures of no more than 1-2 seconds. So I’m guessing maybe 1-2 ISO.

His images of Utah and Arizona remind us just how special the landscapes of the American West really are. If I have a favorite location it has to be Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border.

These were probably the first ever photographs made of the American West. You can see much more here.

I took the picture below in beautiful Utah a couple of decades ago, using a Rollei 6003 MF film camera. While heavy, it was without a doubt the best handling chest-level camera I have used, with state-of-the-art ergonomics and optional exposure automation. The Zeiss lenses weren’t half bad, either, and no wet collodion was involved. The film was scanned on a Nikon Coolscan 8000 MF scanner. Both camera and scanner are long sold, with superior quality easily obtainable from modern DSLR hardware at a fraction of the cost with far less weight.

Utah, Rollei 6003 Professional, 40mm Distagon, Kodak Portra.

An exceptional talent.

The Austrian photographer Inge Morath (1923-2002) was that rare beast, a woman photographer in a male dominated Magnum photo agency.

1954 – untitled. (Probably in Ireland).

Spain.

Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Misfits

Read more about this talented photographer on Wikipedia.

Inge Morath’s Leica M2. Yes, you can pull the other leg on that wear pattern.

You can see more of her work on the Magnum site where the cleanliness of her composition is abundantly in evidence.