Che Guevara

Alberto Korda, 1928-2001. Che Guevara, March 5, 1960.

The image of Che Guevara is still almost ubiquitous forty-five years after his death. The handsome young man in a dark beret adorned with a single bright star above his forehead, with thick black curls surrounding his face, and an intense and unforgettable gaze up into the distance has captured the imagination and aspirations of millions of people of several generations. This photograph of Che has become an iconic image and is considered by many to be the most famous photograph in the world. At first, it synthesized and epitomized in a single image the Marxist ideology that Che Guevara and Fidel Castro espoused; later its message was adopted and adapted by others to symbolize and express their own vastly different hopes and dreams.

In order to understand the initial impact of this image after his death, it is essential to understand who Che Guevara was. Born in a middle-class family in Argentina in 1928, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a physician who became inspired by the idea of social change and gave up status and power to pursue his beliefs. He became a Marxist revolutionary and took part in Fidel Castro’s guerrilla struggle in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra against the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Following the success of the socialist revolution in Cuba, Che was first appointed commander of a military prison. Soon after that, he served as president of the National Bank of Cuba and later as minister of industry. His revolutionary spirit led him away from Cuba to the Congo and later to Bolivia, where he engaged in guerrilla warfare against the local regimes. On October 9, 1967, he was captured and killed by Bolivian forces, apparently in secret collaboration with the CIA.  

The photographer who took this most famous photograph (although he was not aware of its impact at the time) was Alberto Korda. Born as Alberto Gutierrez Diaz in Cuba in the same year as Che Guevara, he adopted early as his last name that of the Hungarian film-maker Alexander Korda. He studied journalism and established a photographic studio in Havana in the 1950s. Korda was an earnest sympathizer of Castro’s new socialist government and accepted a position as his photographer at official events.

On March 5, 1960, during a speech by Fidel Castro at the funeral of victims of a French boat explosion in Havana harbor (blamed by Cuba on a U.S.-instigated act of sabotage), Korda snapped two photos of Che Guevara. Reminiscing about the exact moment of taking those photos, Korda explained years later: “I decided to watch from the crowd and used my Leica with its medium telephoto lens. I planned the podium and suddenly Che moved forward into my camera. I made a picture, and immediately thinking for a cover of our newspaper, turned the camera vertical, made another – and the moment had gone.” (“Alberto Korda”). The photographer was working on an assignment for the newspaper “Revolucion.” When reviewing his work at the studio, Korda found the first photo particularly impressive, so he cropped it and printed it as a portrait. He named the photo Guerrillero Heroico. Although the newspaper did not publish it, he later offered copies of it as a gift to Italian left-wing publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli as an illustration for an upcoming book.

The photograph lay dormant until Che’s death on October 9, 1967, when it became the most sought-after image of him. It became an object of inspiration and veneration for millions of people in South and Central America, where he was considered a martyr. Ever since the night when Fidel Castro announced Che’s murder in a speech at the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana, a monumental banner with Korda’s portrait of Che has adorned the wall of the ten-story Ministry of the Interior building there. As soon as the news of Che’s murder reached Europe, Feltrinelli released Korda’s photograph of Che in the form of a poster. In a very short time, it reached all corners of the world. It was posted in homes and public places and was soon transferred to t-shirts. 

Jim Fitzpatrick and his famous silkscreen portrait of Che.

In 1968, the Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick created a black-on-red silkscreen image of Che Guevara based on Korda’s photograph. He employed the “line drop” process, outlining the image of Che in black against a red background, and hand-coloring the star in yellow. This portrait became not only his most famous work, but ultimately one of the most famous iconic images of all time. Fitzpatrick had the opportunity to meet Che Guevara during the latter’s visit to Ireland in 1962. Inspired by Che’s ideas and by his martyrdom, Fitzpatrick disseminated his silkscreen portrait of Che for free, with his only desire being to ensure that his hero’s memory would live on (Tipton).

Korda’s photograph and its derivative images attracted widespread attention and gave many young people a visual image that encapsulated their desires for social reform. Che possessed many features that helped his image to become an icon: he was both young and handsome, invoking love and adoration in the hearts of millions; he abandoned a comfortable life and considerable status to follow his ideals, and he became a revolutionary not only in words but also in deeds, thus providing a moral example for many who aspire for social reform and justice; he died young, which fixed his image as that of a heroic martyred revolutionary. Korda’s photograph captured magnificently many of those features in the expression of his face and in the determination of his fiery gaze off into the distance.  

Death picture of Che Guevara, October 9, 1967.

Ironically, given the atheistic nature of Communism, Korda’s photograph of Che has taken on the role not only of a secular icon, but also a religious one. Even his beret could be perceived as a partial halo around his head. The religious connotation of Korda’s photograph was reinforced at the time by another image of Che Guevara taken right after his death—that of his body propped up on a stretcher on top of a cement surface in a stable and surrounded by soldiers and journalists. This unforgettable image “not only summed up the bitter realities of contemporary Latin American history,” but also resembled the 15^th-century foreshortened image of The Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna and Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Tulp (Sontag, 107). In adherence to local belief in the miraculous powers of those who die tragically, thousands of photographs of Che were sold in Bolivia in the days after his death and displayed in homes next to images of Christ and the Virgin. The religious appeal of Che’s photograph spread throughout Latin America and Cuba (Goldberg, 159). 

 

However, not everyone agrees that Che was a saint or even a hero. Some representations also based on Korda’s photograph or stylized versions of it depict him as ruthless and bloodthirsty and strive to disclose dark truths about his life that are little known by some who aspire to his example. For example, anti-Communists modify Fitzpatrick’s image, replacing Che’s face with that of Hitler or of Death (a skull), or drawing a circle around Che’s head and canceling it out with a diagonal line.

Finally, it is remarkable and ironic to observe how the image of this anti-capitalist revolutionary has become a source of income for enterprising capitalists. His image has been emblazoned on posters, t-shirts, mugs, coasters, tattoos, socks, pins, hats, etc. One wonders to what degree the later generations who have no direct connection with him or his time are aware of the image’s original Marxist appeal. Some studies show that “the memory of revolutionary figures can retain their antisystemic appeal even in the face of pervasive commodification” and that such is the case with the image of Che Guevara, the iconic significance of which has retained its power to stand for the “political struggles of oppositional groups” (Larson and Lizardo, 449). Its enduring – and adaptable -- iconic power is demonstrated by its use in the recent Egyptian uprising and other demonstrations around the world.

Works Cited

“Alberto Korda.” The Times: 17. May 28 2001. ProQuest Newsstand. Web. 24 Nov. 2012.

Goldberg, Vicki. The Power of Photography. New York: Abberville Press, 1991. Print.

Larson, Jeff, and Omar Lizardo. “Generations, Identities, and the Collective Memory of Che Guevara.” Sociological Forum 22.4 (2007), 425-451. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2012.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, 1978. Print.

Tipton, Gemma. "The Irish Artist Who Captured Che." Irish Times: 5. Feb 19 2011. ProQuest Newsstand. Web. 24 Nov. 2012.