Robert Capa's most famous photograph (even though sometimes accused of being staged) is probably the one that captures a Republican in the Spanish Civil War in the Moment of his death in 1936 ( [link] ). When Capa fled to America in 1939, he left behind the negatives of his other photographs taken in Spain during the Civil War in his darkroom in Paris. He assumed that they had subsequently been lost in the Nazi invasion.

However, the 3500 negatives appear to instead have been brought to Mexico City by a Mexican diplomat, from where they have now been transferred to the International Centre of Photography in New York after years of negotiations.

The New York Times reports that the Centre's chief curator Brian Wallis classifies the negatives as "the holy grail" of Capa's work. With the discovery of the negatives, there comes the hope that the question whether Capa's most famous photograph was in actual fact staged can finally been answered by finding negatives that show the subject before and after the photograph in question. More importantly, however, with the discovery of the negatives the photography world gains a deeper insight into the artistic work of a photographer that has defined and shaped how war has and is seen.

Robert Capa died in 1954 in Vietnam, believing the negatives had been lost.

Sources used for this are a Spiegel Article from the 2nd of February 2008 (pg 127) and a New York Times article ( [link] ), I can only recommend in case you are interested in the details of this discovery. It also showcases images of the suitcase containing Capa's negatives.