Alberto Korda - Che Guevara

DESCRIPTION:

Title: Che Guevara
Year: 1960
Artist: Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, called Korda
Technique: Silver gelatine print
Signature: yes
Date: yes
Certificate of authenticity: yes
Condition: very good
Vintage print
Image size: 21,5 x 25 cm
Photo size: 21,5 x 28 cm

THE PHOTO:

There are photographs that linger in the imagination. Faces that we remember because we have seen them a hundred times on photographs, posters, T-shirts, iconic images that are part of our culture and our way of remembering the world. One of them is the  “Guerrillero Heroico”, a portrait of the Argentine revolutionary man, Ernesto Guevara detto il “Che”.

On 5 March 1960, the state funeral was held for the 136 victims of the explosion of the French ship 'Le Coubre' in the port of La Habana. Cuban photographer, Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, known as Korda, was there as a correspondent for the newspaper “La Revolucion”, armed with his Leica. He was impressed by the then the Minister of Industry: Ernesto “Che” Guevara. “His eyes were mysterious, but in reality they showed only blind rage at the deaths of the previous day, and the struggle of the families”. As el Che approached the edge of the crowd to watch the funeral procession, Korda clicked twice.

None of the photographs the Korda took that day were published until the following year and their circulation remained limited to Cuban newspapers.

In June 1967, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli,  stopped in Cuba on his way back from Bolivia and received two Korda's pictures as present. He titled the photo “Guerrillero Heroico” and published it as poster and cover of the book “Diario in Bolivia” ("Journal in Bolivia"). A few months later, in October, el Che was killed in an ambush by a Bolivian soldier. It's said that before he died he shouted “Shot, coward! You will only kill one man!” He was right. The photo was posted on the streets of Milan, printed in the famous  Paris Match magazine and a huge reproduction was hung on the façade of the Ministry of the Interior in La Habana. Ernesto “Che” Guevara became a martyr, an hero of the revolution of Latin America. 

Almost immediately, the photograph lost its original meaning to become part of a new imaginary, fading from the film to become an icon.

THE ARTIST

Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, known as Korda (1928-2001), Cuban, fashion photographer for Havana Weekly, excellent portraitist, after the revolution he joined the staff of the newspaper La Revolucion. He has been the personal photographer of Fidel Castro for 10 years. Proud that his photographs served the revolutionary cause, he was also the founder of the underwater photography section the Cuban Oceanographic Institute.  

One of the most famous, reproduced and commercialised photographs in the world: "Guerrillero Heroico", Ernesto “Che” Guevara became a popular icon from bring a symbol of the revolution.