THE MEXICAN SUITCASE
Catalogue
On 19 December 2007, three battered, commonplace cardboard boxes arrived at the International Center of Photography in New York. Within these boxes the so-called Mexican Suitcase was a treasure trove of photographic history believed lost since World War II: the legendary Spanish Civil War negatives of Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour (known as Chim). The Mexican Suitcase contained 126 rolls of film, mostly shot between May 1936 and spring 1939, that are an inestimable record of innovative war photography and of a definitive episode in Spanish history.
Carole Naggar wrote an essay on a never-published reportage by Chim about the Regulares Indigenas, Moroccan soldiers hired by Franco to fight the Republicans.They were exploited and killed on the frontlines, and after the war they never received what Franco had promised them.
