{"id":8092,"date":"2013-04-16T17:07:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T15:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colleensparis.com\/?p=8092"},"modified":"2020-04-21T17:13:16","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T15:13:16","slug":"treasures-in-a-mexican-suitcase-capa-taro-chim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/2013\/04\/treasures-in-a-mexican-suitcase-capa-taro-chim\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasures in a Mexican Suitcase-Capa, Taro, Chim"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mus\u00e9e<\/a>

“Spectators at the funeral of General Lukacs, Valencia, June 16, 1937”, by Gerda Taro \u00a9 International Center of Photography. “Exiled Republicans marching along the beach from one internment camp to another, Le Barcar\u00e8s, France, March 1939”, by Robert Capa \u00a9International Center of Photography \/ Magnum<\/p><\/div>\n

An acquaintance mentioned to me the name of an exhibit she had seen and liked: “La Valise mexicaine, Capa, Taro, Chim-Les n\u00e9gatifs retrouv\u00e9s de la guerre civile espagnole<\/strong>”\u00a0. The mysterious name drew me to the exhibit housed in the Paris Jewish museum. “The Mexican Suitcase, rediscovered spanish Civil War negatives<\/strong>”\u00a0is on display until June 30, 2013 at the Mus\u00e9e d’art et d’histoire du Juda\u00efsme.<\/p>\n

During the course of the exhibit, I found out that four photojournalists and friends could support themselves as photographers in Paris, a female was a pioneering war photographer, and that when you have a chance to flee a dangerous situation, you leave valuable things behind. Hard-core evidence of four and a half years in the span of history and the Spanish Civil War disappeared in 1939.<\/p>\n

Negatives in the boxes<\/strong>
\nThe valuable things are called “the suitcase”. “The suitcase” is three small boxes containing nearly 45,000 negatives of images shot by Robert Capa<\/strong> (Endre Ern\u00f6 Friedmann, born in Hungary), Gerda Taro<\/strong> (Gerta Pohorylle, born in Stuttgart), Chim<\/strong> (David Seymour\/Dawid Szymin, born in Warsaw). \u00a0A side mystery to the war photographs is why a couple of Fred Stein’s<\/strong>\u00a0(born in Dresden)\u00a0photos of Taro and Capa were found in the “suitcase” as well as four rolls from Capa’s trip to Belgium. The collection of negatives would not resurface until 1995. Through persistent persuasion, they finally came into the possession of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York in 2007.<\/p>\n

Capa joined many other French and European artists and intellectuals in 1939,\u00a0leaving Paris and the negatives. He received a visa from the Chilean consul and a commission from Life magazine and took the ship to New York. The negatives stayed with Csiki Weisz in Paris and were then passed from hand to hand for safekeeping.<\/p>\n

Negatives to back up the story<\/strong>
\nThe exhibit features the\u00a0photojournalists\u00a0in the throes of the daily lives of their subjects. The photos in the displayed magazines are sound bites or snippets verifying the descriptions and stories written in the articles. \u00a0The ICP writes that the negatives\u00a0“provide insight into how a photographer covered a story in its original sequence. This is the largest cache of negatives of such historic value by such major photographers to have ever been found, nearly seventy years after they disappeared.”<\/p>\n

The magazines–Regards<\/em>,\u00a0Vu<\/em>,\u00a0Life<\/em>,\u00a0Schweizer Illustrierte Zeitung<\/em>,\u00a0Volks-Illustriete<\/em>, employed Capa, Taro and Chim to document the Spanish Civil War: A war which began with a military coup (Nationalists) after a democratic election (Republicans) in 1936.<\/p>\n

\"Mus\u00e9e<\/a>

One of three boxes of negatives by Capa, Taro and Chim known as the Mexican suitcase \u00a9Collection ICP<\/p><\/div>\n

The collection offers an opportunity to bring those snippets to life in 32 chapters. Each chapter focuses on one of the three photographer’s vision of a particular moment in the Spanish Civil War. The exhibit features contact sheets, images of the photographers during “down” time, their notebooks and photo scrapbooks, the Valencian crowds waiting at the fence to enter the morgue after the air raid, the soldiers eating and fighting, daily life of villagers before, during and after raids, the refugees on their way to the French border and their internment — the details behind the sound bites.<\/p>\n

The rolls of film in one of the three boxes of “the suitcase” are like round pegs in square holes. Drawn on the lid are squares with a number, a location or a description. Each square matches a roll of film in the box. Bataille de Brunete takes up squares 74, 75 and 76. Those three words leave no hint that Capa will lose his former lover, Taro, during this battle.<\/p>\n

The negative journeys<\/strong>
\nThey negatives were in the possession of a Mexican filmmaker who had inherited them from an aunt who was friends with a General who was Mexican ambassador (1941-1942) during the Vichy reign in France. In 2007, the filmmaker, Benjamin Tarver, gave the negatives to curator and filmmaker, Trisha Ziff. She persuaded Tarver to give the “Mexican Suitcase” to the International Center for Photography in New York.<\/p>\n

I visited the exhibit on a Wednesday around 11 a.m. in virtual tranquility. Taking my time to study the French magazines on display, trying to find the published photos on the contact sheets made the visit more intense. The doorman provides you with a square, plastic magnifying sheet. The exhibit\u00a0was very crowded by the time I left.<\/p>\n

More Reading and Information<\/strong>
\nThe trailer for the\u00a0film “The Mexican Suitcase”<\/strong>\u00a0provides a general idea of the exhibit.
\nThe Story of the “Mexican Suitcase”\u00a0<\/strong>
\nFrequently Asked Questions about the Mexican Suitcase<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mus\u00e9e d’art et d’histoire du Juda\u00efsme<\/strong><\/a>
\nH\u00f4tel de Saint-Aignan
\n71, rue du Temple 75003
\nPhone: (33) 1 53 01 86 60
\nEmail: write to us info@mahj.org<\/p>\n

Metro: Line 11 (Rambuteau), Line 1 and 11 (H\u00f4tel de Ville)
\nBuses: 29, 38, 47, 75
\nRER: Ch\u00e2telet-Les Halles
\n300 metres from the Pompidou Centre<\/p>\n

Open: Mondays to Fridays 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
\nSundays 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
\nLast ticket sales 5.15 p.m.
\nLate opening Wednesdays until 9 pm (exhibitions only)
\nLast ticket sales 8.15 pm
\nClosed Saturday
\nClosed May 1<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2013 Colleensparis.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An acquaintance mentioned to me the name of an exhibit she had seen and liked: “La Valise mexicaine, Capa, Taro, Chim-Les n\u00e9gatifs retrouv\u00e9s de la guerre civile espagnole”\u00a0. The mysterious…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[691,662,730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-museum-exhibitions","category-photography"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Valise-mexicaine-Capa-Taro-Chim-affiche.jpg?fit=424%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8092"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17496,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8092\/revisions\/17496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-wptechsupport.com\/colleensparis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}