We Went Back: Photographs from Europe 1933-1956 by Chim @ICP

JTF (just the facts): A total of 127 black and white and 8 color photographs, generally framed in black and matted, and hung against light grey and dark grey walls in a winding series of connected spaces on the main floor of the museum. The exhibit also includes 10 cases containing magazines/spreads, books, and other ephemera. For the most part, the works on view are vintage prints.The exhibit was curated by Cynthia Young. A catalog of the exhibit was recently published by Prestel (here). (Installation shots at right © International Center of Photography, 2013. Photographs by John Berens.)

The show is divided into titled sections. For each section below, I have tallied the number of images on view and listed other supporting materials.

(Entry)
10 gelatin silver prints, 1934-1937

France and the Popular Front
10 gelatin silver prints, 1935-1936
1 case containing 3 magazines/spreads, 1935-1936

The Spanish Civil War
23 gelatin silver prints, 1936-1939
1 wall of 32 Regards covers, 1935-1939
1 case containing 4 books, 1 magazine/spread, 1936-1938

We Went Back
6 gelatin silver prints, 1947
2 inkjet prints, 1947
1 case containing 4 magazines/spreads, 1947
1 case containing 3 images of Chim, 1 press card, 3 books, 1 image of Chim and Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1 exhibitor card, 1 museum card, 1 Polish ID card, 1 Henri Cartier-Bresson photo of Chim and Robert Capa, 1 press card, and 1 brochure
1 case containing 2 books of WWII aerials

The Children of Europe: A UNESCO Photo Story
30 gelatin silver prints, 1948
2 inkjet prints, 1948
1 case containing 2 magazines/spreads, 1 book, and 1 newspaper, 1948-1949

Postwar European Politics
13 gelatin silver prints, 1947-1956
1 inkjet print, 1947-1948
1 case containing 4 magazines/spreads, 1947-1948

Germany's Year of Destiny
7 gelatin silver prints, 1949
1 case containing 5 magazines/spreads, 1947-1949

Portraits
6 gelatin silver prints, 1950-1956
1 inkjet print, 1952

Italy
12 gelatin silver prints, 1949-1955
2 inkjet prints, 1952
1 case containing 9 magazines/spreads, 2 books, 1950-1956

Israel: The Early Years
19 gelatin silver prints, 1951-1954
2 inkjet prints, 1952
1 case containing 4 magazines/spreads, 1953-1954

The Suez Crisis
4 gelatin silver prints, 1956
1 case containing 2 magazines/spreads, 1956

(Table)
4 books
1 screen

Comments/Context: The ICP has stayed close to its photojournalism roots with this solid retrospective of the work of David (Chim) Seymour. Using a chronological structure, it traces his career over the period of roughly two decades, mixing various documentary and reportage projects with celebrity portraits and his well known images of children. It marks him as a consistently keen observer of political and social life, wherever his camera may have taken him.

The story begins in the early 1930s with Chim making photographs of political demonstrations and rallies in France, full of bull horns, raised fists, and painted signs. His images of the Spanish Civil War from a few years later generally avoid the pitch of battle, instead focusing on smaller visual vignettes of ordinary people. A nursing mother at a land reform meeting, a refugee girl with dolls, a young boy with a toy gun, a destroyed typewriter, each is a poignant backstory to the fighting. By the end of the decade and with World War II beginning, Chim left for New York and ended up making military aerial photographs for the next few years.

After the war ended, Chim went back to Europe (thus the title of the exhibit) and made images of the rebuilding efforts and the plight of its orphans. Groups of children play under the looming rusty hulk of Omaha Beach debris and solitary boys are found in bombed out buildings and perched on rubble piles. Smiling faces mix with apprehension and fear, whether in bunk rooms, hospitals, or unattended out in the fields. The wild chalkboard scrawls of a young girl drawing "home" is a particularly grim symbol of the turmoil and anguish faced by these kids.

Toward the end of the 1940s, Chim returned to political rallies and marches, covering the German elections of 1949 (and the parrot that said "Heil Hitler"). His work in the 1950s covered even broader territory. He took celebrity portraits of Ingrid Bergman and her newborn twins, Peggy Guggenheim and her dogs, and Bernard Berenson in the Borghese gallery, and captured smaller moments of Italian life, from the laundry line of the Swiss Guards to the bustle of Rome street markets. His last projects took him to Israel, where he documented kibbutz dancing, olive grove planting and border sirens, and finally to Egypt, where he was killed covering the Suez crisis.

This retrospective does its job - it deftly cements Chim's place among the important figures of photojournalism. For me, this show was a reminder of how photographs of conflict need not have the clashing action as their subject to be powerful. Chim's real talent lay in his ability to tell the larger political story via smaller details and personal moments, uncovering the emotional landscape of the human impact far removed from the front lines.

Collector's POV: Since this is a museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices. Chim's work has only been intermittently available in the secondary markets in recent years. Prices have ranged from roughly $1000 to $4000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: New York Photo Review (here), Magnum Photos website (here)

 

We Went Back: Photographs from Europe 1933-1956 by Chim

Through May 5th

International Center of Photography

1133 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10036

The Mexican Suitcase @ICP

JTF (just the facts): A total of 70 black and white photographs (framed in black and matted) and 102 contact sheets (unframed and pinned directly to the walls), hung against yellow walls in all of the gallery rooms on the main floor of the museum. The photographs are a mix of vintage and modern gelatin silver prints; the contact sheets are modern pigment prints. 20 glass cases circle the galleries, displaying relevant magazine spreads, letters, telegrams, notebooks, and other ephemera. The exhibit also includes selections of newsreels, a map of the various travels of the photographers, and a computer area for further study. All of the works were made during the period between 1936 and 1939. The exhibit was curated by Cynthia Young. A two-volume monograph, cotaining a full reproduction of all the images in the Mexican Suitcase, has recently been published by Steidl (here) and is available in the store for $98. (Since photography is not allowed in the ICP galleries, there are unfortunately no installation shots for this show. The images at right come via the ICP website.)

The following photographers were included in the show, with the number of works on display in parentheses:

Robert Capa (24 prints, 37 contact sheets)

Robert Capa/Gerda Taro (9 prints, 9 contact sheets)

David "Chim" Seymour (21 prints, 31 contact sheets)

Fred Stein (1 print, 2 contact sheets)

Gerda Taro (15 prints, 23 contact sheets)

Comments/Context: When the mystery "suitcases" finally found their way to the ICP in 2007, the unexpected rediscovery of the three boxes of long lost Spanish Civil War negatives had the photography world aflutter. Were the images all by Robert Capa? Did they definitively tell us whether Capa's famous The Falling Soldier was authentic or staged? The photo world waited with bated breath. In the end, the "Mexican Suitcase" didn't hold answers to this one controversial Capa question, but provided a surprisingly thorough picture of what it was like to be a war correspondent armed with a hand camera during the Spanish Civil War. Containing a mix of negatives from Robert Capa, David "Chim" Syemour, Gerda Taro and Fred Stein, the boxes tell the story of the origins of embedded photojournalism, where the photographers actively participated in the action, had clear biases and sympathies, and chose different narratives to follow. (Robert Capa, Exiled Republicans being marched on the beach from one internment camp, Le Barcarès, France, March 1939, at right top, via ICP.)

Robert Capa's images of the war are filled with up-close activity and movement. Young soldiers race into the blurred, smoky front line action of the Battle of Rio Serge, with others stand and peer out of rubble strewn bombed out windows. Recruits are mobilized in Barcelona, and refugees are herded down the beach or holed up in tent camps in France. Gerda Taro's images also track the battle, from attacking soldiers to burning trucks. The wounded and dead lay in plain sight, and the families in Valencia are left to helplessly wait for information. Shooting together, Capa and Taro also captured gunstocks stuck in the trench sandbags near Madrid and the destroyed walls of buildings torn apart, some left standing, others leveled to the ground. David "Chim" Seymour's photographs are less concerned with the immediacy of battle, and instead turn toward the more subtle consequences of the war. His camera is variously pointed at outdoor masses, Basque markets, anguished faces at a land reform meeting, and soldiers protecting art, capturing military and civilian expressions with equal candor.

What I liked most about this exhibit was the meticulousness with which the contact sheets and prints were matched with the magazine spreads. This detail work enables the viewer to see how the stories got constructed, how the photographers created the narrative lines via the types of images that they took. Even though the small contact sheets require some patience to pore over, they do provide the sequential context for how the photographers were "seeing" the chaos around them, and how they were framing the eventual history that would be written. Given the political viewpoints of the photographers, the line between reportage and propaganda gets a little muddy in some places, and the contact sheets make these choices more obvious.

Overall, this is a very visceral show, and all the outtakes make for a down and dirty picture of war. While there are some standout single images buried in among these thousands of frames, I was more struck by the overall sense that I myself was standing with a camera, immersed in the dizzying heat of the battle (or its aftermath), trying to make sense of it all and looking for a thread of a story to follow. The show is an amazingly potent dose of the challenges faced by these war-time photojournalists, their successes and failures vibrantly real even decades later.

Collector's POV: Since these negatives were recently rediscovered, it is not surprising that vintage prints of works from this period are scarce. More generally, of these photographers, Robert Capa has the most robust secondary market, with plenty of images coming up for sale in any given year; prices have typically ranged between $2000 and $22000, with most under $5000. Works by David "Chim" Seymour can be found only intermittently, the few lots that have sold finding buyers between $1000 and $4000. The works of Gerda Taro and Fred Stein have very little, if any, auction history. Since Capa and Seymour were members of Magnum, modern prints of their images can be acquired directly via the Mangum Photos store (here). (Gerda Taro, Crowd at the gate of the morgue after the air raid, Valencia, May 1937, at right bottom, via ICP.)

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

.

Transit Hub:

• Exhibition website (here)
• Reviews: NY Times (here and here), Financial Times (here), Artinfo (here), Idiom (here)

The Mexican Suitcase: Rediscovered Spanish Civil War Negatives by Capa, Chim, and Taro

Through January 9th

International Center of Photography

1133 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10036