Modern war photography –- with men and women at the front lines, sending rolls of film back to editors who featured their images in newspapers and magazines around the world –- began with the Spanish Civil War.

That conflagration, which raged from1936 to 1939, was a tragic prelude to World War II, with many of the same players. Ultimately, General Francisco Franco, with the help of Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy, won the war and overthrew the democratically elected Republican government.

Three Paris-based photographers — young Jewish exiles and close friends — became world famous covering that war. They were: Polish-born David Seymour (Chim); Robert Capa, an émigré from Hungary; and Gerda Taro, born in Germany to a Polish-Jewish family. Chim, an established professional, went to Spain on assignment.

Capa and Taro crossed the border as fearless free-lancers. All three openly supported the anti-Fascist Republican cause and were eager to use the camera as a weapon to fright Franco. They not only recorded battle scenes but, whenever possible, the harrowing effects of war on refugees and civilians. Their work in Spain is legendary. It laid the foundation for passionate, engaged, up-close war photography, a tradition we now take for granted. As Capa used to say, “If the photograph isn’t good enough it’s because the photographer isn’t close enough.”

Chim (David Seymour)
[Outdoor mass for Republican soldiers, near Lekeitio, Basque region, Spain], January–February 1937
Negative
© Estate of David Seymour / Magnum
International Center of Photography

The dashing Capa and intrepid Taro were personal and professional partners. Taro’s brief career as a pioneering photojournalist consists almost entirely of her front-line photography during the Spanish Civil War.

Gerda Taro
[Crowd at the gate of the morgue after the air raid, Valencia], May 1937
Negative
© International Center of Photography
International Center of Photography

Robert Capa
[Man carrying a wounded boy, Teruel, Spain], late December 1937
Negative
© International Center of Photography / Magnum
International Center of Photography

Ultimately, all three were killed covering 20th Century wars: Taro in 1937 in Spain; Capa in 1954 in Vietnam; Chim in Egypt during the 1956 Suez War. Taro was struck by a tank and died, the first female photographer to be killed while reporting on war. For Capa, it was a personal as well as professional tragedy. She was the love of his life whose work he continued to champion.

So famous did this trio become, that doubts and debates long raged about their war work. Did Taro, a neophyte photographer, actually take the photos attributed to her? Were some of Capa’s photos actually staged?

Now, more than seventy years later, in a story worthy of The Maltese Falcon, a treasure trove of their Spanish Civil War work has resurfaced. And some, if not all, of the questions have been answered or at least illuminated. It turns out that, yes, Taro did take all those photographs. And yes, some of those scenes were staged, but in that era it wasn’t unusual to do so, and they remain great photographs.

Capa left Europe in 1939, one step ahead of the Nazis. Before departing, he and Chim packed and entrusted to their friend and studio manager three boxes containing 4,500 35mm negatives of war photos taken by himself, Taro and Chim. They were to be sent to New York, where Capa was planning to launch his American career. But amidst the chaos of war, the negatives travelled from Paris to the South of France, and then vanished. In the early 1990s, they resurfaced in Mexico City in the collection of General Francisco Aguilar, who had been the Mexican Ambassador to France’s collaborationist Vichy government in 1941-42. Ultimately, his heirs returned the negatives to the estates of the photographers, and in December of 2007, this astounding cache of negatives – the Mexican Suitcase – along with several rolls of film containing portraits of Capa and Taro by a colleague in France at the time, Fred Stein, arrived at the International Center of Photography in New York, an institution founded by Cornell Capa, Robert Capa’s brother. It was presented to Cornell Capa shortly before he died.

Now, this groundbreaking exhibition of the most famous group of recovered negatives of the Twentieth Century, is on view at the International Center of Photography through January 9, 2011.

Organized by ICP’s assistant curator, Cynthia Young, the negatives have been researched, digitized, and displayed in a variety of ways: as a continuous time line of contact sheets, as iconic images, often next to the original 1930s magazines in which the work first appeared, along with the three “boxes” that constitute the “Mexican Suitcase.” The show is organized chronologically, with separate sections devoted to the work of Chim, Taro and Capa, so that visitors can compare and contrast their visual styles and interests.

The inside lid of the Mexican Suitcase boxes are marked by a grid with names, places or subjects that correspond to the rolls of film placed in separate containers within the box. They offer a new and richer pictorial narrative of how each of these photographers worked, a broader overview of the war, as well as previously unknown portraits of Ernest Hemingway, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Dolores Ibarruri (known as “La Passionaria”).

Also on view are Notebooks by Capa, Chim and Taro with contact prints of their negatives, originally produced to show the full coverage of stories to potential editors and to keep track of which images were used by which magazines. Finally, there is a recently rediscovered film of America’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, shot by Henri Cartier-Bresson, a close friend of Capa’s. It uses Capa footage and corresponds to stills in the Taro suitcase negatives.

Altogether, the exhibition provides rare insight into the creative process of three towering 20th century photographers. The way the material is displayed is a monument to curatorial creativity and dedication. It will be studied and savored by history and photography buffs alike. I look forward to going back and immersing myself in its unique narrative. In its own way, the show is a blockbuster not to be missed.