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| The biggest icon of the 20th Century: Alberto Korda'spicture of Che Guevara. |
By Julio Nakamurakare
Herald Staff
Herald Staff
Exhibition features work of artist famous for portrait of ‘Che’ Guevara and Cuban revolution
When you see the image of Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary “Che” Guevara reproduced on hundreds of thousands of posters, T-shirts and other ideologically-charged souvenirs, it’s sometimes hard to remember that it took a man and an unmissable (an unmissed) photo op to create one of the 20th Century’s most images. Legend has it that photographer Alberto Korda (1928-2001) was covering just another partisan event of the Cuban revolutionaries when he saw Che slowly turn his head back toward the place where Korda was standing. Korda’s reflexes were quick.
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| Fidel Castro and Che Guevara on a fishing boat, as photographed by Alberto Korda. |
He shot, the shutter clicked, and he kept on shooting until Che faced the camera with a fierce look on his face,donning a beret on his dishevelled, shoulder-length manes of abundant black hair. Out of that shoot, an image emerged in the dark room that Korda chose as an emblematic depiction of everything the Che embodied. He was right: the world of publishing, the printed media, movies and television turned the photograph into an immortal iconic image, and Korda’s name, until that moment just a man with a camera, became synonym with a keen eye for opportunity and an enormous talent to match.
Now a massive exhibition of Korda’s oeuvre is on view in BA at the Centro Cultural Borges, featuring portraits of Fidel Castro on tour in Cuba and abroad, plus photos taken by Korda during a more glamorous, scarcely known phase of his career, that of female portraits not related to the revolution, and a series on the island nation’s aquatic life and popular festivities.
Korda, pasión e imagen (for such is the title of the retrospective housed at the Borges Centre) features 110 photographs plus a videotaped interview with Korda, Guerrillero heroico, with footage selected by his daughter, Diana Díaz López, and her husband Reinaldo Naranjo. The exhibition was curated jointly with Virginia Fabri.
Korda’s iconic photograph of Che (the world’s best-kwnon picture, courtesy of Italian publisher Giancomo Feltrinelli, who printed the first posters of the picture, taken in 1960 during the wake held for victims of the attack against the La Coubre ship), serves as prologue to the exhibit.
“I was lucky to take that picture and leave something to humanity. For what can a humble Cuban say about a photograph he took which (turned out to) surpass all other images? (This picture) belongs with others of the Che with Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and Gabriel García Márquez,” Korda is heard saying on the videotape.
La niña de la muñeca de palo, another asset in the show, was always known as “Paulita” to her father, according to Díaz López, curator of the archive housed at the Historical Affairs Board of Cuba, where some 55,000 negatives of Korda’s work with Castro are preserved. Sadly enough, the remainder of Korda’s work, nearly 80 percent, is lost.
The picture of the peasant girl, taken by Korda in 1959, at the start of the Cuban revolution, “makes you teary-eyed,” warns Díaz López. Wrote Korda a propos that picture: “This girl embracing a branch which (as a toy) she called “my boy,” convinced me that I should dedicate my work to a revolution (designed to) change those inequalities.”
“Dad was scouting locations for publicity in rural areas, and took several pictures of this girl, around two years old, who jumped with fright when she saw him,” Díaz López recalls. “(The girl) would tell a tree branch, ‘Please don’t cry, my baby.’ That same year the photograph was published in the newspaper Periódico Revolución on a full page, urging city dwellers to send clothes and toys to rural areas. It had a great impact,” she continues.
“Afterwards, from time to time, they would get in touch. He visited her for the second time when she was in primary school. Then she graduated as a nurse and, at age 20, she married and invited him to the wedding,” Díaz López says.
“Wearing a dressing gown and a very beautiful hat with multicoloured flowers, she posed with a tree branch instead of a bouquet of flowers, and when dad asked her to smile (for the camera) she refused, because she wanted (this photo) to be like the first one. A year and a half went by and her family phoned (my father) to let him know that she was dead. I keep that photo at home,” López Díaz says. In 1968, when Cuba nationalized the few remaining private businesses, Korda recovered the Fidel Castro and Che Guevara photos, but the negatives of relatives and models were lost, “They may be forgotten in some warehouse,” says Díaz López without rancour, because she keeps copies of them.
The fashion and aquatic photographs were never seen in Argentina, and so were some of the revolution, taken in China in 1961.
Among them, there’s one that catches the eye: the Che, his back to the camera, fishing with Fidel, by the side of a signboard reading, “Concurso de pesca de pez aguja Ernest Hemingway, 1960, La Habana” (Ernest Hemingway Fishing Contest, 1960, Havana).
With online media
When & where
Korda, pasión e imagen. Until September 13 at Centro Cultural Borges, Viamonte corner San Martín. Tel: 5555-5359. Email: info@ccborges.org.ar. On the Web: http://www.ccborges.org.ar/exposiciones/expoKorda.html.
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| Alberto Korda's La niña de la muñeca de palo. |
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