Capa’s holy grail

Modern war photography’s raw material found a safe home in New York last month. Robert Capa’s negatives from the Spanish Civil War made their way to the International Center of Photography, which was founded after his death by his brother Cornell.

The journey took about 70 years, saved from Nazi destruction by a darkroom manager named Cziki, on through Marseille, and ending up in Mexico City. Word emerged in 1995 that this “Mexican Suitcase” of film might exist, and a series of diplomatic negotiations allowed the return of these lost negatives.

ICP chief curator Brian Wallis called these negatives the “holy grail” of Capa’s work. “Capa established a mode and the method of depicting war in these photographs, of the photographer not being an observer but being in the battle, and that became the standard that audiences and editors from then on demanded,” he said. “Anything else, and it looked like you were just sitting on the sidelines. And that visual revolution he embodied took place right here, in these early pictures.”

Two photographs hang above the monitors in my office, and one is Capa’s Falling Spanish Soldier, which I have owned since 2002. It was not made from the original negative, but was authorized by Cornell and approved by the estate. Now I know why it was not made from the original… it had disappeared