What's in your Mexican Suitcase?

(a photo of my dad and me taken in 1958, taken by my dad with the camera set to 'timer')

In a recent article on Sportsshooter.com,http://www.sportsshooter.com/news/1908, photographer Matt Mendelsohn wrote about photojournalist Robert Capa and his image of 'Falling Soldier'. The jist of the article is about how after printing his award winning image of a Spanish soldier being shot, and at the moment of death, Capa left his negatives in a Paris darkroom as he was fleeing Europe for America in 1939. After more than a half a century, the negatives were discovered in Mexico City after not being seen in many, many years.

I've recently been going through and scanning hundreds of slides my dad shot in the early 1950's and 1960's. Kinda like his Mexican suitcase. He really didn't shoot a lot of images, but when you shoot a roll here and a roll there, after a few years they begin to add up. And every image he took was shot on transparency film, with most of it being shot on good ol' Kodachrome. I cannot remember him ever shooting anything on negative film, only slides.

So get out your Mexican suitcase and revisit your old images. Don't leave them stacked in an old cardboard box or in a dresser drawer. You may be suprised at what you find.



my dad at the end of the Korean war in Tokyo Harbor.


a picture of my mom taken in our spacious house trailer taken in 1957


For some strange reason, back in the deep, dark recesses of my mind, I remember taking this image at my grandmothers house of my cousins playing basketball. It is dated 1962 and is quite possibly the first image ever taken by me. A sports image of all things.