The Capa Cache

Thousands of negatives of photographs taken by Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War, long thought to be lost forever, have resurfaced. Photo by Tony Cenicola.

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By Randy Kennedy, The New York Times

To the small group of photography experts aware of its existence, it was known simply as “the Mexican suitcase.” And in the pantheon of lost modern cultural treasures, it was surrounded by the same mythical aura as Hemingway’s early manuscripts, which vanished from a train station in 1922.

The suitcase—actually three flimsy cardboard valises—contained thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil War before he fled Europe for America in 1939, leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom.

Capa assumed that the work had been lost during the Nazi invasion, and he died in 1954 on assignment in Vietnam still thinking so. But in 1995 word began to spread that the negatives had somehow survived, after taking a journey worthy of a John le Carré novel....

READ ON at nytimes.com

___________________

Mike

Comments

[Ctein]

ohmigawdohmigawdohmigawd.

I am SO going to be first in line to buy the book when it's published.

pax / Ctein

[Michael Arcila]

Oh my god! Capa! I really really hope we'll get to see these in a massive compendium! I've been a huge fan of his style, and I must say his pictures have gone a long way in defining the "look" of war. I credit (blame) his work for being one of the reasons I'm quite obsessed with WWII. =)

Michael

[Peter Hovmand]

This is wonderful news! That really makes my heart take an extra beat. It reminds of how Capa years later lost most of his first exposures from D-day, simply because of stressful, faulty development of the films. But the shots that survived was well worth it!

[David Bennett]

I await seeing what is on these negatives with some trepidation and a lot of interest.

Thanks for posting, Mike.

[Mike Johnston]

"ohmigawdohmigawdohmigawd. I am SO going to be first in line to buy the book when it's published."

Ctein,
Too late, but you can be second, right behind me [g]...

Mike J.

[christopher]

okay, then i'll be the first to buy it in Germany ; )

[ycl]

Excellent -- hopefully no Errol Morris-type investigation will be needed to determine whether "The Fallen Soldier" was staged or not!

Not that it matters, of course, but I'd wager ... staged!

[John Camp]

That's so cool. Unstaged.

JC

[John MacKechnie]

This is a fascinating story. I saw the ICP exhibit in November and look forward to the next; after scholars have had an opportunity to study the negatives and attempt to answer some the intriguing questions that surround Capa's body of work.

[Chris Y.]

Read the Capa biography "Blood and Champagne" by Alex Kershaw. It's a better book and a much more interesting story than the title would suggest - they don't make them like Capa anymore.

[EmmJay]

Famous digital war photographer's memory cards are found 60 years later. Damn no one can open the raw files. LOL

[Zlatko]

There is a little mystery that someone brought up on rangefinderforum.com. If you look closely at the rolls of film in the NY Times photo, all of them seem to have sprocket holes that are too far apart. They are probably about twice the normal distance apart compared with regular 35 mm film. Someone speculated that this might be movie film, but then the rolls would only represent a few seconds of film. If it is in fact 35 mm film, then these wide-apart sprocket holes might not work correctly in a Contax or Leica, or would they? Anyone have a clue?

[Geo]

Motion picture film has the same sprocket hole spacing as still-photo film - The Leica was originally designed to make use of motion picture film for the sake of economy and portability. The only diffence is how the film is threaded and used: movie film uses 4 holes per image (running the film vertically) versus 8 holes for photo (horizontally, of course). [Except Vista-Vision movie format - also 8-perf horizontal]

-George (Cinematographer and Photographer)

[Zlatko]

I just realized that no one can see the sprocket holes in the NY Times photo here. You have to go to the NY Times site via the "READ ON" link and click on the "Multimedia" link in the article and then click to "Zoomify" the image either with the slider or by just clicking on it a few times. Then the wide-apart sprocket holes become easy to see.

[Bob Rapp]

Perhaps, not totally on topic, there is a reference in Karen Nakamura's Photoentography blog referring to a scanned book "Secret Museum of Mankind". It is worth a long browse. The link can be found at:
http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/

Cheers,
Bob Rapp

[Jag]

Just how cool and level-headed are those Mexicans, eh?

[Bill]

Many of them look like they are much longer rolls of film than your ordinary 24-36 exposures. Leica FF?

[robert e]

Zlatko,

I find it impossible to judge from that photo, because of the perspective and lack of any size reference. However, if you instead click on the slideshow, slide #2 is a contact sheet, in which you can easily see the typical 8 sprocket holes per frame of 35mm film. The holes themselves do appear smaller than those on my modern films, so perhaps you interpreted the smaller holes as regular-sized holes spaced farther apart?