How a Che Guevera Photo Spawned a Thousand Copies | Eye on Design Share Tweet Share Email With the United States lifting travel restrictions on visiting Cuba, who isn’t fantasizing about a trip to the off-limits tropical time warp? Of course you don’t have to travel far to see the (often illegally reproduced likeness) of the country’s infamous revolutionary leader. But here’s the full story behind the famous image. On March 5, 1960 Cuban photographer Alberto Korda took what would become one of the most iconic images of the second half of the 20th century. A personal friend of Field Castro, Korda had been anointed as his official photographer for the Cuban Revolution (1953–1959), a drastic change from his previous shooting banquets, baptisms, and weddings. According to Korda, “Nearing 30, I was heading toward a frivolous life when an exceptional event transformed my life: The Cuban Revolution.” Korda’s original photograph The day before the aforementioned iconic photo was taken, the freighter “La Coubre” exploded while 76 tons of Belgian munitions was being unloaded in Havana harbor.

It was during a memorial service the following day–attended by French existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as Castro—that Kordo snapped the photo, now known as “Guerrillero Heroico” (“Heroic Guerrilla Fighter”). It was of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, of course, an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist, as well as a leader of the Cuban Revolution. But the editor of Revolución passed it up in favor of Korda’s shots of Castro, Sartre, and Beauvoir. Believing in the power of the image, Korda cropped, upped the contrast, rotated the photo slightly, and made copies to give out as gifts. A stylized version of Jim Fitzpatrick’s drawing The image remained relatively unknown until 1968, a year after the leader’s execution, when Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli used it on the cover of Guevara’s Bolivian Diary. That same year, the image began popping up everywhere. Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick used Korda’s image for a stylized, psychedelic-influenced poster.

Gerald Malanga, American poet, photographer, filmmaker, curator, and archivist, sold an Andy Warhol forgery based on Fitzpatrick’s poster (below). In February, American publisher Barney Rosset commissioned designer and illustrator Paul Davis to create the cover of Evergreen No. 51, featuring speeches and letters by Castro and Guevara. The theme for the issue was “The Spirit of Che,” but Davis also based his painting on Korda’s photograph, marking the first time the image was seen in the United States. Davis’ painting became as iconic in American as Korda’s had become in Europe. As a result, the Evergreen publisher’s offices were firebombed by anti-Castro Cuban émigrés. Malanga’s forgery When I visited France in 2002, Che’s visage was everywhere: as graffiti, as a car-seat cover pattern (alongside icons like Dali, Dean, Gandhi, Einstein, and Marley), even as a little girl’s T-shirt, with his beret and locks intact but his face replaced by a teddy bear’s.

Cover of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life In the AIGA Design Archives , art Director John Gall pays tribute to both iconic versions, first using Davis’ painting in 1997 for the cover of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life , by Jon Lee Anderson (while he was the art director of Grove/Atlantic), then using Korda’s image in 2009 for Che’s Afterlife , by Michael Casey (while he was art director at Vintage). Special thanks to Morris Taub Alberto Korda | Cuban photographer | Britannica.com Cuban photographer Originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year. Presented as archival content. Alternative Title: Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez Alberto Korda Paris , France Alberto Korda (Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez), (born Sept. 14, 1928, Havana, Cuba—died May 25, 2001, Paris, France), Cuban photographer who , took one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century—a 1960 image of guerrilla leader Che Guevara that was widely reproduced on posters, cards, and T-shirts.

Korda had been a prominent fashion photographer in the 1950s before deciding to chronicle the lives of Cuba’s revolutionary leaders, including Guevara and Fidel Castro. Exhibits of his photographs were later staged in France and the U.S., among other countries. In the 1990s Korda waged a legal battle against the commercial reproduction of his iconic portrait of Guevara. EXPLORE these related biographies: Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American artist) Cuban-born American sculptor, photographer, and conceptual artist known for work in a variety of media that addresses issues of identity, desire, originality, loss, the metaphor of journey, and the private versus the public domain. Like many artists of the 1980s, Gonzalez-Torres used the postmodern strategy of appropriating ready-made motifs and objects... Man Ray (American photographer and painter) photographer, painter, and filmmaker who was the only American to play a major role in both the Dada and Surrealist movements. The son of Jewish immigrants—his father was a tailor and his mother a seamstress—Radnitzky grew up in New York City, where he studied architecture, engineering, and art, and became a painter.

As early as 1911, he took up the... Raúl Castro (Cuban head of state) head of state of Cuba (since February 2008), defense minister (1959–2006), and revolutionary who played a pivotal role in the 26th of July Movement, which brought his brother Fidel Castro to power in 1959. The youngest of three brothers, Raúl Castro was born to a Spanish father and a Cuban mother. He embraced socialism as a young adult and belonged... You have successfully emailed this. Error when sending the email. Try again later. Edit Mode Submit Tips For Editing We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Encyclopædia Britannica articles are written in a neutral objective tone for a general audience. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context.

(Internet URLs are the best.) Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions. Submit Thank You for Your Contribution! Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article. Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. Uh Oh There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. Close Date Published: December 31, 2001 URL: Access Date: January 02, 2017 Share The extraordinary story behind the iconic image of Che Guevara and the photographer who took it The extraordinary story behind the iconic image of Che Guevara and the photographer who took it posted Thursday, June 6, 2013 at 3:51 PM EST Cuban photographer Alberto Korda's photo of Che Guevara has been emblazoned on posters, t-shirts, diapers, playing cards and almost everything imaginable.

Today, the Che image is well over 50 years old and is still as popular and as marketable as ever. "Strolling down Brunswick Street or Chapel Street (in Brisbane), it could be easy to think Che Guevara was the only man under 40 never to have worn a Che Guevara T-shirt." -- Richard Castle in The Brisbane Times. It should have made Korda rich and famous, but it didn't. In fact it was almost forgotten for years. The journey of Che's photograph is a remarkable voyage through the murky waters of communism and capitalism. The photographer Alberto Diaz Gutiérrez was born in Havana in 1928 and learned photography as a studio assistant shooting weddings, baptisms and funerals. In 1953, he opened his own studio and he changed his name to Alberto Korda. Within a few years Studio Kordas was the premiere fashion photography studio in Cuba. Korda would later admit that he chose a career in fashion photography because his "main aim was to meet women." Alberto Korda holding the negative of the world's most iconic image.

Korda’s success in fashion photography came to abrupt end in 1959 when, as he recounted, "Nearing 30, I was heading toward a frivolous life when an exceptional event transformed my life: the Cuban Revolution." Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara rode triumphantly into Havana in January of that year, and with their arrival Korda the fashion photographer became the Revolution's photographer and Castro's friend. The moment The Che image was made on March 5, 1960, at a funeral service for the 136 people who were killed when a French ship carrying arms to Havana was sabotaged and blown-up. Crowds filled the street of Havana, and Korda was there working for the newspaper Revolución. As Castro’s funeral oration droned on Korda approached the speakers' platform. With Castro were other leaders of the revolution, the French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and, of course, Che. When Korda got close to the platform, he noticed that Che -- who had been standing in the back of the stage -- had moved forward. "I remember his staring over the crowd on 23rd street," Korda says.

Staring up, he was struck by Guevara's expression which he says showed, "absolute implacability," as well as anger and pain. Korda was shooting a Leica M2 loaded with Plus-X film and had a 90mm Leica telephoto lens mounted on it. He managed to take just two frames -- one vertical and one horizontal -- before Che stepped away. Che Guevara, 1960 Photo by Alberto Korda. When Korda returned to his studio, he processed the film and made several prints for Revolución. For the Che photo, he cropped the original frame into a vertical portrait to eliminate distracting elements. Ironically, the newspaper didn't use the Che image, but instead chose a shot of Castro with Sartre and de Beauvoir. Years passed by and the photo languished on the wall of Korda’s studio, although he did make a few prints as gifts to friends. The "viral" effect This all changed one day in early 1967 when an Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, came with a letter from the Cuban government asking Korda to help find him a portrait of Che.

Korda pointed to the print hanging on the studio wall, saying that it was the best one he had ever taken of Che. Feltrinelli ordered two prints, and when he came to pick them up the next day, Korda said that as a friend of the revolution Feltrinelli did not have to pay for them. From here things get strange, as the two prints began to go "viral," so to speak. First, mysteriously, the photo appeared in Paris Match magazine in August 1967 in an article titles "Les Guerrilleros." It was not credited and no one to this day knows how the magazine got hold of it. Then around the same time, an Irish artist named Jim Fitzpatrick used the image as the model for a color poster. Fitzpatrick claims that he got the photo from the Dutch anarchist group "The Provos," who said they got the photo from Sartre. Che Guevara, 1968. Painting by Andy Warhol The tipping point But the tipping point for the image was in October 1967, when Che was executed in Bolivia.

Demonstrations broke out around the world condemning the murder and Feltrinelli printed up thousands of Che posters and sold them to protesters. The photo was now called Guerrillero Heroico, and it next surfaced in 1968 on New York City subway billboards as a painting by artist Paul Davis advertising the February issue of the Evergreen Review magazine. Because Fidel did not recognize or sign the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, neither Korda nor the Guevara family has earned anything from the billions of reproductions of the image. Without copyright protection, anyone could use it and the more it was seen, the more it got used.

In 2000, Korda sued Smirnoff, the Vodka company, for using the image in an advertisement, saying that, "As a supporter of the ideals for which Che Guevara died, I am not averse to its reproduction by those who wish to propagate his memory and the cause of social justice throughout the world, but I am categorically against the exploitation of Che's image for the promotion of products such as alcohol, or for any purpose that denigrates the reputation of Che." Korda received an out-of-court settlement of $50,000, which he donated to the Cuban healthcare system, "If Che were still alive, he would have done the same," Korda said. But the case proved that Korda had completely lost control of the Che image and any uses. With endless reuses for commercial and social purposes, the photo has become more of a graphic icon and has lost much of its individuality. However, simultaneously, it has also gained a certain universality. Shooting slightly upwards at Che -- who is looking off into the middle distance -- Korda captured the look of a Hollywood leading man.

This fit his subject perfectly, as Lawrence Osborne observed in the New York Observer, "Che was the revolutionary as rock star. Korda, as a fashion photographer, sensed that instinctively, and caught it." The meaning lost -- or not? Today few people who wear Che clothes or have items with emblazoned the image really know who he was, let alone that it was Korda who took the photo. Che's revolution is history, communism is all-but-dead and, for most people today, Cuba's just another island in the Atlantic. The image has lost its connection to its moment and circumstances, and has become as Darrel Couturie, Korda’s representative, put it, "the image (is) of a very dashing young man." That dashing young man has a mythic quality that is compelling. His beret links him to the common man, and his faraway look is not unlike that in depictions of the Buddha or Christ. Ironically, Che's daughter Aleida has said that despite the "ubiquitous exploitation" of the image as a fashion statement, it would have made her revolutionary father happy. "He probably would have been delighted to see his face on the breasts of so many beautiful women," she said.

As for the man who captured the iconic image, Alberto Korda died of a heart attack in 2001 while setting up an exhibition of his photographs in Paris. He is buried in Havana. Obituary: Alberto Korda | World news | The Guardian Alberto Korda Ebullient Cuban photographer whose portrait of Che Guevara became an icon for a generation of protest Michael Chanan Sunday 27 May 2001 21.03 EDT First published on Sunday 27 May 2001 21.03 EDT Share on Messenger Close The Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, who has died of a heart attack aged 72 while visiting Paris for an exhibition of his work, will be best remembered for his portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara - one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, and one of the few that truly deserve to be called iconic. Born in Havana, the son of a railway worker, the young Alberto had a variety of jobs before he started working as a photographer's assistant. He was a runner for a betting shop and a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman.

He took up photography with frankly macho motives: "My main aim was to meet women," he once confessed. "I wanted to be near beautiful women." He succeeded by marrying Cuba's most beautiful model of the day, Niurka, though his three marriages ended in divorce. Naturally charming and ebullient, the diminutive and wiry Alberto soon established himself as a successful fashion photographer, changing his surname from Díaz Gutiérrez to that of the British film-maker Alexander Korda because it sounded like "Kodak" to his Cuban ear. He soon had his own studio in Havana, and an expensive playboy lifestyle. Like so many of his compatriots, his life was transformed by the Cuban revolution of 1959. On an assignment in the countryside soon after the guerrillas defeated the dictator Batista, he encountered such poverty that he was converted to the revolutionary cause. He began to follow the new Cuban leaders around, offering his photos to the newspaper Revolución, whose offices were close to his studios.

He spent 10 years as Fidel Castro's official photographer, using his skills to humanise the revolutionary leader's image in off-duty scenes - sharing moments with Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre, or confronting a caged tiger at the New York Zoo. It was while on an assignment for Revolución in 1960 that Korda took the famous photo of Che, at a protest rally after a Belgian freighter carrying arms to Cuba was blown up by counter-revolutionaries while being unloaded in Havana harbour, killing more than 100 dock workers. As he later recalled, it was a damp, cold day. Using a 90mm lens, he was panning his Leica across the figures on the dais when Che's face jumped into the viewfinder. The look in Che's eyes startled Korda so much that he instinctively lurched backwards, and immediately pressed the button: "There appears to be a mystery in those eyes, but in reality it is just blind rage at the deaths of the day before, and the grief for their families." Ironically, Korda's picture was relegated to an inside page of Revolución, giving pride of place to Fidel.

The original remained on the wall of his studio until 1967, when he gave two 10" x 8" prints of it as a gift to the leftwing Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (the man who first published Dr Zhivago in the West, and who was blown up by a car-bomb in 1972). A few weeks later, Che was captured and killed in Bolivia - and became an instant martyr. When Castro addressed a memorial rally in Havana's Plaza de la Revolución, Korda's photo was used as a mural on the building facing the podium; it is still there. Feltrinelli instantly spotted the value of the image, using one print for the cover of Che's diaries, and giving the other to the makers of the posters which were soon being carried through the streets of Europe in the protest marches of 1968. This image of Che, noble and defiant, with tilted beret and flowing locks, rapidly spread to T-shirts and album covers, and was soon taken up by advertisers targeting youth, until it rivalled the Mona Lisa as perhaps the most replicated image ever.

But Korda received no royalties; Feltrinelli had used the photo without permission, and even failed to credit him as the photographer. In any case, Korda had no remedy until Cuba rejoined the international copyright convention in 1997. Finally, angered when the image appeared in a Smirnoff advert in Britain - Che never drank - he asked the Cuba Solidarity Campaign to help him sue Smirnoff's advertising agency, Lowe Lintas, and the picture library, Rex Features, for infringement. By happy coincidence, he received the news of an out-of-court settlement on his birthday last year, during a visit to London for the Cuba, Si! exhibition of Cuban photography at the National Theatre. He immediately handed over an undisclosed sum to buy much-needed medicine for Cuban children. A lifelong smoker and rum drinker, Korda told marvellous anecdotes of the ascetic revolutionaries. "Once, I had to take pictures of Che cutting cane with the workers," he said. "He made me work for a week cutting cane before he'd let me take a shot.

He was hard that way." From 1968-78, Korda concentrated on underwater photography, until a Japanese exhibition in 1978 stimulated international interest in his work. From the early 1980s, he lived in modest semi-retirement, though he accompanied Castro on a recent visit to Venezuela and Mexico. In 1999, he appeared in the pre-title sequence of Wim Wenders's documentary, Buena Vista Social Club, rifling through photos from the heroic early days - here is Che, for example, playing golf with Castro ("Who won?" "Fidel, because Che let him") - which ends with an image of a demonstration outside the US embassy that Korda called "David and Goliath". For some reason, Wenders fails to credit him. Speaking in Havana late last year, Korda, who leaves two sons and two daughters, said: "Life may not have granted me a great fortune in money, but it has given me the even greater fortune of becoming a figure in the history of photography." The Cuba Si!

exhibition, which includes some of Korda's work, is at the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, until June 16, and at Wingfield Arts, Eye, Suffolk, from July 7 until September 30.  Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez (Korda), photographer, born September 17 1928; died May 25 2001 Portrait of Che Guevara - "Guerrillero Heroico" - Alberto Korda (1960) - PopSpots - PopSpotsNYC.com To be notified of new PopSpots entries, follow PopSpotsNYC on Twitter: For questions or comments you can email me (Bob) here. Guerrillero Heroico (English: "Heroic Guerrilla Fighter") by Alberto Korda (1960) Locating the spot where here one of the the world's most famous photos was taken.

(note: much of the information this article is abbreviated from the Wikipedia entry "Guerrillero Heroico." Read it for more details, analysis, and history of the photo.) The iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (below) taken by Alberto Korda in 1960 is, according to the Maryland Institute College of Art, the world's most famous photo. (Alberto Korda (1928-2001) was also known as Alberto Gutierrez, or just the single name Korda.) (photo by Alberto Korda) Versions of the photo have been painted, printed, silk-screened, or sketched on nearly every surface imaginable, leading the Victoria and Albert Museum to say that the photo has been reproduced more than any other image in photography. This 5-story relief sculpture of it can be found, for example, on next to the Plaza of the Revolution in central Havana. Parodies of it abound. The photo was taken on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the explosion of a munitions boat, the La Coubre, the day before in Havana Harbor (more on this later).

Guevara was 31 years old at the time. The photo is most often referred to as "Guerrillero Heroico," which in English is: "Heroic Guerrilla Fighter." The original photo had the profile of a man on the left and a palm tree on the right, but they have been edited out as the photo was reproduced throughout the world. (photo by Alberto Korda) This is a composite illustration of the stage Che was on when the picture was taken. That's Fidel Castro giving a memorial speech to those who died in the explosion. Here's a close up of that. And here' a mock up the present day location where the photograph took place: on a temporary stage at the intersection of Avenida 23 and Calle 12, in the Vedado District of Havana. The palm tree behind Che would have been in front the tall white building on the corner. Just to the right of where the stage was, there is a memorial sculpture commemorating Castro's speech of that day. I have circled the location in red. This is a close up of the relief sculpture from a video. This is a better view.

The plaque is called The Socialist Revolution Plaque and celebrates the march and Castro's speech of that day. (photo by Hans Sterkendries/Google Earth) A little bit of background history. Now that you have the basic information about where on the stage the photo was taken, let's backtrack so I can give you a little bit more detail about the events of the day day and how Korda happened to take that particular photo. First off, here's a map of where Cuba is located, for all you folks a little rusty on your geography. And here's an aerial photo of Havana. You can see it that is has a large harbor. Castro and his revolutionaries had forced the current Cuban dictator - General Batista - to flee the country on December 31, 1958. Castro entered Havana a little over a week later on January 8th, 1959.

About fourteen months later, on March 4th, 1960, while a large French freighter called La Coubre was being unloaded of its cargo of munitions in Havana Harbor - it blew up, killing almost 100 people and injuring 200 others.* *(It is still unclear if the ship up blew up accidentally (as if a spark ignited some of the munitions), or if it was blown up intentionally as an act of sabotage. An American-backed forced did invade Cuba a year later - on April 17, 1961 at the Bay of Pigs, but the incidents more likely are totally unrelated, although that is still disputed.) Here's a picture of the ship called La Coubre (The Snake) after the explosions (there were two). Castro blamed the United States and the C.I.A. for blowing up the ship, so on March 5th he called for a march, a mass demonstration and a memorial service to honor the victims near Havana's Colon Cemetery (i.e. Columbus Cemetery; full name: "Cemetario de Cristóbal Colón") where the dead were to be interred.

At the time, Che Guevara was Minister of Industry in the new government, and Alexander Korda was Castro's official photographer. The funeral march was held along a major Havana Street named Avenida 23 (English: Avenue 23) which is also known as La Rampa and is filled with cinemas, nightclubs, and restaurants. It runs through an area of Havana known as the Vedado District. Large crowds gathered and marched along the route to the cemetery. Here's a shot of the march. Castro (left) and Che (middle) were among those leading the march down La Rampa toward the Colon Cemetery. When the marchers reached the intersection of Avenida 23 and Calle 12 (i.e. Avenue 23 and 12th Street), they began the memorial ceremony on a makeshift stage that had been set up at the intersection about two blocks from the Cemetery. This grainy photo is a screen capture from YouTube of a Spanish Language video showing the march and rally at which Che's photo was taken. It is the only picture I could get of the temporary stage that had been built across the intersection. You can see the hats of the soldiers in the front.

(photo via TeleSur) Here it is with one of Korda's pictures of Castro speaking, which I inserted. (I was not able to find actual photos of the event other than the video and Korda's photos.) Castro's fiery speech is famous for incorporating the phrase "Patria o Muerte" ("Homeland or Death") for the first time. Here's another mock-up of the scene from further back. In this one I've taken some frames from Korda's proof sheet and inserted them into the stage Here, below, is Alberto Korda's proof sheet of the event. I have circled the famous shot of Che. (photo by Alberto Korda) To take the photo, Korda used a Leica M2 with a 90 mm lens, loaded with Kodak Plus-X pan film. In speaking about the method, Korda remarked that "this photograph is not the product of knowledge or technique. It was really coincidence, pure luck." Korda was at the rally to record the event. He did not intend to take a portrait of Che. The opportunity just arose by chance.

During the rally, Korda took pictures of Cuban military figures and the famous French existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, both admirers of Guevara, who happened to be visiting Havana at the time. They are pictured in the second, third, and fourth row down of the proof sheet. (photo by Alberto Korda) When a gap opened up among the people on the front row of the stage, Korda could see Che moving forward from the back of the stage. Quickly, he Korda snapped his two famous shots of Che. The photo below is the one that has been reproduced countless times. (photo by Alberto Korda) The vertically-framed shot of Che below has also been reproduced many times (with the man's forehead in back edited out), but Che's gaze is more "offscreen" and the image is considered to have less impact than the more popular photo. (photo by Alberto Korda) When the group of people at the front right of the stage happened to "spread apart," leaving a view to the back of the stage, Korda saw Che come into view and took his two shots him. "Korda immediately realized his photograph had the attributes of a portrait.

Later, Korda said of this photograph, "I remember it as if it were today. Seeing him framed in the viewfinder, with that expression. I am still startled by the impact - it shakes me so powerfully." (Wikipedia) Here's a closer version of the Che part of the photo. This is a composite I made summing up the photo for the PopSpots Facebook page. (note: If you drag the photo onto your desktop, you can send it to friends or put it on your Facebook page.) And an abbreviated version. This picture shows the buildings to the left and how the windows and roofs match up. The building on the corner is now a well-known cafeteria called La Pelota. It is famous as a baseball fan's restaurant; thus the name, which means "the ball." (photo by Nigel Hunt) In this photo you can see from Le Pelota (left) to the tall white building on the right, that is in the background of the stage on the righthand side. (photo by Robert Lam) This man was on stage right. Behind him is a window with a balcony. Here's another view of the tall white building that was in back of the stage on the right hand side.

You can see that presently, it does not have balconies. (photo by Nigel Hunt) But it used to have balconies when the Che picture was taken, as you can see in the black outlines. That picture was taken in 1950 at the exact intersection where the stage went across. Here's where the stage would have been. I've marked where Che would have been standing, facing the crowd which would have been at the back of the picture. Here's the mock-up again of where the stage was between these two buildings. (photo by Nigel Hunt) In case you go here, I will show you the other two buildings on the opposite corner from these buildings. This is the restaurant called "Cafeteria 23 and 12" on the corner directly opposite the tall white building. And this is the building on the other east corner (photo by Robert537) If you click this video, you can see a short video of all four corners of the intersection. And to show you how close the cemetery was, this picture, taken from the green building above Le Pelota Restaurant above the intersection, shows the grand entrance is the gate to the Colon Cemetery a block to the south.

(photo by Juan Ernesto Melian) Here's a map to show you the march route and where the Che portrait was taken. And to wind things up, here's a map to show you the stage was at 23rd and 12th in relation to the cemetery. (One of the many editions of Bolivian Diary with Che's picture on the cover. Aftermath: How the photo spread throughout he world: The editor of Revolución, the newspaper where Korda worked, decided to use only Korda's shots of Castro, Sartre, and Beauvoir, and he returned the film roll that had the two Che shot son it back to Korda. But, knowing that the image he had captured was powerful and unique, Korda made a cropped version for himself, which he enlarged and hung on his wall in his studio next to a portrait of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. He also gave copies to some others as a gift. Meanwhile, 7 years later, in 1967, an Italian publisher named Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was about to publish Che Guevara's "Bolivian Diary" and was looking for a cover shot.

Cuban officials put him in touch with Korda. The publisher distributed thousands of posters of the picture throughout Europe to drum up support for Che, who was still in Bolivia but near capture. Then, after Che was killed, he released Che's "Bolivian Diary" which was a bestseller worldwide and began the spread of the photo. For more details about Che's life in Bolivia and the later spread of the photo, see the Wikipedia entry "Guerrillero Heroico." Che Guevara, Che, Alberto Korda | Netssa Ernesto Che Guevara Alberto Korda The man who made Ernesto Che Guevara an icon, his image of Che Guevara became one of the most famous pictures of the 20th century Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, who died on May 25, 2001 of a heart attack aged 72 while visiting Paris for an exhibition of his work, will be best remembered for his portrait of Ernesto Che Guevara. One of the most famous photographs of the 20th century and one of the few that truly deserve to be called iconic. Born in Havana on Sept.

27, 1928, the son of a railway worker, the young Mr. Korda had a variety of jobs before he started working as a photographer's assistant. He was a runner for a bookmaker and a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. He took up photography with frankly macho motives: "My main aim was to meet women," he once confessed. "I wanted to be near beautiful women." He succeeded by marrying Cuba's most beautiful model of the day, Niurka, although his three marriages ended in divorce. Naturally charming and ebullient, the diminutive and wiry Mr. Korda soon established himself as a successful fashion photographer, changing his surname from Diaz Gutierrez to that of the British filmmaker Alexander Korda because it sounded like "Kodak" to his Cuban ear. He soon had his own studio in Havana and an expensive playboy lifestyle. Like so many of his compatriots, his life was transformed by the Cuban revolution of 1959. On an assignment in the countryside soon after the guerrillas defeated dictator Fulgencia Batista, he encountered such poverty that he was converted to the revolutionary cause.

He began to follow the new Cuban leaders around, offering his photos to the newspaper Revolucion, whose offices were close to his studios. He spent 10 years as Fidel Castro's official photographer, using his skills to humanize the revolutionary leader's image in off-duty scenes, sharing moments with Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre, or confronting a caged tiger at the New York Zoo. It was while on an assignment for Revolucion in 1960 that Mr. Korda took the famous photo of Mr. Guevara at a protest rally after a Belgian freighter carrying arms to Cuba was blown up by counterrevolutionaries while being unloaded in Havana harbour, killing more than 100 dock workers. As he later recalled, it was a damp, cold day. Using a 90-millimetre lens, he was panning his Leica across the figures on the dais when Mr. Guevara's face jumped into the viewfinder. The look in Che's eyes startled Mr.

Korda so much that he instinctively lurched backward, and immediately pressed the button: There appears to be a mystery in those eyes, but in reality it is just blind rage at the deaths of the day before, and the grief for their families. Ironically, Mr. Korda's picture was relegated to an inside page of Revolucion, which gave pride of place to Fidel Castro. The original remained on the wall of Mr. Korda's studio until 1967, when he gave two eight-by-10 prints of it as a gift to the left-wing Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli the man who first published Dr. Zhivago in the West and who was blown up by a car bomb in 1972. A few weeks later, Mr. Guevara was captured and killed in Bolivia and became an instant martyr. When Fidel Castro addressed a memorial rally in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion, Mr. Korda's photo was used as a mural on the building facing the podium. It is still there. Mr. Feltrinelli instantly spotted the value of the image, using one print for the cover of Mr.

Guevara's diaries and giving the other to the makers of the posters that were soon being carried through the streets of Europe in the protest marches of 1968. This image of Mr. Guevara, noble and defiant, with tilted beret and flowing locks, rapidly spread to T-shirts and album covers and was soon taken up by advertisers targeting youth until it rivalled the Mona Lisa as perhaps the most replicated image ever. But Mr. Korda received no royalties; Mr. Feltrinelli had used the photo without permission and even failed to credit Mr. Korda as the photographer. In any case, Mr. Korda had no remedy until Cuba rejoined the international copyright convention in 1997. Finally, angered when the image appeared in a Smirnoff advertisement in Britain, Mr. Guevara never drank he asked the Cuba Solidarity Campaign to help him sue Smirnoff's advertising agency, Lowe Lintas, and the picture library, Rex Features, for infringement. By happy coincidence, he received the news of an out-of-court settlement on his birthday last year, during a visit to London for the Cuba, Si! exhibition of photography at the National Theatre.

He immediately handed over an undisclosed sum to buy much-needed medicine for Cuban children. A lifelong smoker and rum drinker, Mr. Korda told marvellous anecdotes of the ascetic revolutionaries. "Once, I had to take pictures of Che cutting cane with the workers," he said. "He made me work for a week cutting cane before he'd let me take a shot, he was hard that way." The Most Iconic Photos Of The 1960s - All That Is Interesting The Most Iconic Photos Of The 1960s 96 notes Guerrillero Heroico, 1960 “Guerrillero Heroico” or “Heroic Guerrilla Fighter” is one of the most popular and stylized pictures of all time. Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, the image is of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara at a memorial service for victims of La Coubre explosion. It is often considered as the most famous image in the world and certainly lionized Guevara’s person. It is the most reproduced image in photography.

Assassination of Japan Socialist Inejiro Asanuma, 1960 This picture was taken literally a second before the Japanese socialist Party leader Asanuma was stabbed to death on live TV by a right wing extremist. Photographer Yasushi Nagao, whose modest response was that he was in the right place at the right time, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the shot. Burning Monk, 1963 Malcolm W. Browne captured this image of the Vietnamese monk, Thich Quang Duc, who set himself on fire to protest the Diem regime’s ruthless persecution of Buddhists. The image, needless to say, captured the “hearts and minds” of millions world-over. President Johnson Sworn In Aboard Air Force One, 1963 Mere moments after the devastating assassination of President Kennedy, the presidential photographer, Cecil Stoughton, snapped this image of Lyndon B Johnson being sworn in as the new president on board Air Force One. The event occurred mere hours after Kennedy was shot, the reason behind the haunting image of the visibly distraught Jackie Kennedy. How Life Begins, 1965 How Life Begins was an image taken by Lennart Nilsson of developing foetus.

It was taken with an endoscope and published in Life Magazine in 1965, and was the first of its kind to show us where life comes from. James Meredith, 1966 This devastating image shows civil rights activist James Meredith moments after he was shot on June 6, 1966 while leading a civil rights march. Said march aimed to encourage African Americans to exercise their voting rights and this image shows him pulling himself across the Highway in visible pain. Right after being treated, he completed the march from Memphis to Jackson. The Body of Che Guevara, 1967 From one iconic image of Che to another, the Bolivian army took this photograph after capturing and killing the Marxist revolutionary leader as proof of his demise. His death, needless to say, dealt a heavy blow to the socialist movement. Execution of a Viet Cong Guerrilla, 1968 Photographer Eddie Adams snapped this horrific image during the Vietnam War. The photo depicts the South Vietnam’s national police chief, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, executing the Viet Cong captain.

Unfortunately, the photo instigated a lot of ill will towards Loan, who was shunned until late in life, even though his actions are more heroic than the photo would suggest. Earthrise, 1968 Snapped on Christmas Eve, the Earthrise photograph is considered one of the most influential environmental photos ever taken and inspired people to think about our place in the universe. There was a raging debate about who took the photo – Frank Borman or Bill Anders of the Apollo 8 mission – with an investigation confirming Anders was responsible for the color version of the iconic image. Robert Kennedy Assassination, 1968 Years after the assassination of younger brother JFK, this sobering image of Senator Robert Kennedy was taken in a pool of his own blood after being shot at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel on June 5. He was found by a hotel busboy, Juan Romero, shown in this LIFE magazine photo comforting the wounded Senator. Kennedy died shortly after the photo was taken. Man Walks on the Moon, 1969 Neil “That’s one small step for man” Armstrong snapped this image of fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin during their jaunt on the moon. The image became a symbol of American innovation and dedication.

TAGS ALBERTO KORDA: BATISTA OUT, CASTRO IN — REBEKAH JACOB GALLERY September 17, 1928 – March 25, 2001 "Forget the camera, forget the lens, forget all of that. With any four-dollar camera, you can capture the best picture.” - Alberto Korda Alberto Korda For a period of twelve years Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, who adopted the surname "Korda" early in his career after the Hungarian filmmakers Zoltan and Alexander Korda, stood with his camera at the very center of Cuba's political crossroads. When he and a partner opened their first commercial studio in 1956 in order to take up advertising and fashion photography Batista was still running the country. Castro's predecessor, it is often forgotten, operated a corrupt and oppressive regime. The influence of American money and culture played a major role in Havana, and the ambitious young photographer looked to claim his piece of the pie by catering to its appetites.

On first impression it is nearly as shocking to consider that this rising promoter of consumption and sensuality should suddenly be recast as one of the primary documentarians of a socialist revolution.The upshot: for nearly ten years Korda served as something of a court photographer to Castro and his inner circle. Looking at examples of Korda's studio work reveals a strong interest in the glamor of personality and pose. Few pre-Revolution negatives have survived, and those only as second-generation shots taken by the artist from the rare original print. There is a flair to his compositions that elevate them a bit beyond run-of-the-mill commercial pictures. Korda continued to serve as Castro's photographer until 1968, though their personal friendship has survived to the present. Beyond the scope of this exhibition, there is a body of underwater photography and more recent fashion and portrait work that remains to be considered.

KORDA PERSONAL COLLECTION DETAILS: Pass-codes required for click-through information Featured MORE ABOUT ALBERTO KORDA SOLO EXHIBITIONS Cuba Si!, the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, May-June 16th, 2001, and at Wingfield Arts, Eye, Suffolk, from July 7th-September 30th, 2001 Korda and the Revolutionary Image, at the Jordan Schitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon; Eugene, Oregon, August-January 2014 Korda, Museum of Latin American Art; Long Beach, CA, June 6, 2015-September 6, 2015 Alberto Korda: A Revolutionary Shot, Noire Gallery; Torino, Italy, June 8-29th, 2013 Alberto Korda, North Dakota Museum of Art; Grand Forks, North Dakota, March 18th – May 27th, 2001 Korda Moda Exhibit of Cuban Fashion Photography by Alberto Korda, Krause Center for Innovation; Los Altos Hills, CA, October 2nd-December 6th, 2013 Che

 Guevara: Images of Revolution, Museum de Moderne Rupertinum, Salzburg, Austria, November 24th, 2012 - February 3rd, 2013 Alberto Korda: Feminine Photography, La Fabrica, Madrid, Spain, September 2015 Narrative of a Portrait: Korda’s Che, Mexico City, Mexico, March 23rd, 2006 Cuba in Revolution, International Center of Photography, New York City, March 2, 2015 COEX, Seoul, Korea, 2011 Museum of Art, Ft.

Lauderdale, Florida, 2002 C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland, 2000 Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana, 1999 Westbeth Gallery, New York, 1983 Centro de Arte Internacional, Havana, 1980 Consejo Mexicano de Fotografia, Mexico City, 1980 Expo’67, Pabellón Cubano, Montreal, 1967 Museo Nacioinal de Bellas Artes, Havana, 1962 AWARDS Korda was awarded the Cuban "Palma de Plata" in 1959; named Best Photoreporter of the year, Revolución Journal, Havana, 1960–1963; awarded the 5th International Award of Submarine Photografie "Maurizio Sana”, Italy; awarded National Culture Distinction, Ministry of Culture, Cuba; 1994.

CHRONOLOGY 1928 Born in El Cerro neighborhood of Havana, September 14 Studied accounting and stenography in school 1953 Opened his own photography business, Studios Korda, in Havana, which became the premier fashion photography studio in Cuba 1959 Korda’s success in fashion photography came to an end, when, as he recounted, “Nearing 30, I was heading toward a frivolous life when an exceptional event transformed my life: the Cuban Revolution.” With the arrival of Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Korda the fashion photographer became the Revolution’s photographer and Castro’s friend.

Began working as a photographer for the Cuban newspaper Revolution Worked as Fidel Castro’s official photographer for 10 years throughout the Revolution Sent to Venezuela to cover Fidel Castro’s first official visit abroad and also traveled with Castro to the US to document iconographic images, such as Fidel at the Lincoln Memorial 1960 It was while on an assignment for Revolución in 1960 that Korda took the famous photo of Che, (Guerrillero Heroico) at a protest rally after a Belgian freighter carrying arms to Cuba was blown up by counter-revolutionaries while being unloaded in Havana harbour, killing more than 100 dock workers.

1968-1978 Korda concentrated on underwater photography, culminating in a major exhibition in Japan in 1978 1980s Korda lived in semi-retirement in Havana, though he accompanied Castro on a recent visit to Venezuela and Mexico 1999 Appeared in the pre-title sequence of Wim Wenders’s documentary, Buena Vista Social Club, rifling through photos from the heroic days 2000 Sued Smirnoff in London on ideological grounds for using the famous Che Guevara image, Guerrilero Heroico, in an advertisement; “To use the image of Che Guevara to sell vodka is a slur on his name and memory,” he told the Guardian newspaper at the time. Che was never a drinker, for one thing, and Korda himself liked rum, Havana Club 3 años being his favorite. May 25, 2001 Died of a heart attack while visiting Paris for one of his exhibitions POSTER BOY: ALBERTO KORDA His face has become an iconic image, used both as a symbol of protest and a fashion accessory.

Richard Gott traces the story of Korda's photo of Che Guevara Star quality ... a poster for the V&A's Che Guevara exhibition PR The famous photograph of Che Guevara snapped by Alberto Korda in 1960 has circulated throughout the globe in the past half century, endlessly reproduced in increasingly exotic forms, each created with different intentions and evoking varied responses. Jesus Christ, Madonna, Princess Diana have all had their picture adapted and inserted under Che's familiar red star beret, and framed by the same shaggy locks, in a subversive format pioneered by irreverent manipulators of the Mona Lisa. Che the icon has overtaken Che the revolutionary practitioner and theorist, and inevitably this transition is now the subject of books, exhibitions and doctoral theses. While several books have dealt with the photographic and artistic portrayal of Guevara over the years, a new exhibition, originally shown at the California Museum of Photography and coming to the V&A this week, concentrates specifically on the history and legacy of the Korda portrait, often known as the Guerrillero Heróico, the startling image with eyes gazing fiercely into some distant horizon, traditionally displayed in students' rooms.

The original photograph was taken at a dramatic and dangerous moment at the start of the Cuban revolution's second year. Seeking to arm itself against a US invasion everyone knew would come, the new revolutionary regime had ordered a boatload of weapons and ammunition (mostly rifles and grenades) from Belgium, an imperial arms-manufacturing country that was trying, at the time, to disentangle itself from its African colony, the Belgian Congo. Several tons of this vital cargo, carried by a French ship, La Coubre, exploded in Havana harbour in March 1960 as it was moored ready to unload. The crew and 75 Cuban dockers were killed, and more than 200 were injured. Extensive damage was caused to the installations of the port. For Cubans with a sense of history, the tragic explosion recalled the destruction of the US battleship Maine in the same harbour in 1898, an event that killed 258 sailors and sparked off the US invasion of Cuba that same year. Did this fresh disaster presage another American attack? And was it sabotage or (as the Maine was subsequently revealed to be) an accident?

No one knew, but, at the funeral ceremony for the dockers held the next day, Fidel Castro claimed immediately that it was the work of the Americans. Crowded on to the improvised platform beside him were Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and behind, in a zippered jacket arriving late, was Che Guevara, the man who had invited them to Cuba. Alberto Korda, a photographer then working for the newspaper Revolución, snapped away at the celebrities, recalling the event years later to Jorge Castañeda, one of Che's biographers. "Che was not visible; he was standing behind the rostrum. But for a moment there was an empty space in the front row, and in the background the figure of Che appeared. He unexpectedly entered my viewfinder and I shot the photo horizontally. I immediately realised that the image of him was almost a portrait, with the clear sky behind him." Korda took two shots, the first with Guevara framed alone between an anonymous silhouette and the frond of a palm tree, and the second with someone's head appearing above his shoulder. The first picture, with the intruding material edited out, became the original famous portrait.

Neither photograph attracted the attention of the picture desk of Korda's newspaper. Other shots were available of the Cuban and foreign dignitaries at the funeral parade, as well as of Castro speaking, and these were the ones used in the paper. Korda's photo of Che was first printed a year later in an advertisement for a lecture that Guevara was about to give in April 1961. It appeared twice, because the lecture was postponed as a result of the Bay of Pigs invasion by US-backed Cuban exiles that had been expected at the time the photograph had been taken. The picture then disappeared for several years, like Guevara himself. He left Cuba in 1965 to help organise guerrilla operations elsewhere, first in Africa in the Congo, and later in Latin America. Not until August 1967, when he was known to be fighting in Bolivia, engaged in his final guerrilla war, after Havana had published his last revolutionary message - "Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams" - was the Korda photograph first printed abroad.

This was to accompany an article written by French journalist Jean Lartéguy about the guerrilla movements in Latin America, which appeared in Paris Match Two months later, in October, Guevara was captured in the hilly scrub of eastern Bolivia and shot on the orders of the Bolivian high command. Castro addressed a huge memorial rally at the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana, facing an immense blown-up photograph of the Guerrillero Heróico that had been placed over five storeys of the building housing the Ministry of the Interior. (A more permanent metal silhouette remains there today.) The vital connection between the recently martyred Che and Korda's mournful, elegiac and evocative photograph had been established. The image soon caught on abroad. Korda clearly liked the picture and had it pinned up in his studio, and he would sometimes give a copy to favoured guests. One of these was Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the radical Italian publisher who made frequent visits to Cuba in the early years of the revolution and had once planned to ghost Castro's biography (and who blew himself up in an ill-advised sabotage operation outside Milan in 1972).

After Che's diary of his Bolivian expedition had miraculously surfaced in Havana in 1968, Castro gave Feltrinelli the Italian rights and the book was published in Italy with the Korda photo on the cover. Feltrinelli also arranged for the printing of hundreds of posters, using the photograph to advertise the book, and these were soon taken up by Italian students demonstrating during the hot summer of 1968. The image, evoking the memory of Guevara's recent death, spread throughout the demonstrations in Europe that year as a symbol of student struggle and international protest. The iconic career of Korda's photo had begun. The Russian revolution had pioneered the creation and use of political posters as an important propaganda tool, and the Cuban revolution had done the same, adopting the commercial techniques of Madison Avenue for their own ideological purposes to brilliant effect. The enthusiasm of radical newspapers for the photo-mechanical transfer, which enabled simple photographs to be transformed in the darkroom into a half-tone image that was easily and cheaply printed, gave the Korda portrait its trendy, mass-produced quality.

It exploded on to the international scene at a very specific moment, when the new wave of Pop Art, which created posters associated with the music business, was sweeping through the western world. The Beatles, Bob Dylan and other rock bands commissioned pop artists to design their record sleeves. The red star in Che's beret was up there with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and Andy Warhol's silk-screen images of Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong were soon adapted to include him. I have written many times, in this paper and elsewhere, of meeting Che Guevara and being struck by his magnetic physical attraction, comparable to the aura of a rock star. Almost everyone had the same impression, and journalists were particularly susceptible. I thought he was beautiful. Marilyn Zeitlin from the US remembered him as "absolutely gorgeous". Julia Costenlos from Argentina recalled how he was "blessed with a unique appeal ... an incalculable enchantment that came completely naturally". Others, those perhaps who knew him better, recognised that he could be cold and harsh, preoccupied and uncaring, driven by an internal flame that had little time for the sensitivities of others. He was, after all, an exponent and practitioner of revolutionary violence.

Most of those who sport the Che Guevara logo today forget that he was the Osama bin Laden of his time. He believed the US to be the principal menace in the world, and he thought it was the duty of revolutionaries to encompass its destruction. He was living, of course, during the Vietnam war, and the last article he wrote, "Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams", published in 1967, was a call for fresh struggle to be launched around the world to take the pressure off the Vietnamese. "Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism," he wrote, "and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America." He called for the struggle to be taken "into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: - to his home and his centres of entertainment." He called for his own death to be celebrated with "the staccato singing of the machine gun", and several of his disciples took him at his word. The Tupamaros, a guerrilla movement in Uruguay, kidnapped and shot a US torture instructor and blew up a nightclub.

Securely insulated from politics, Guevara's image is now largely perceived as a fashion accessory, the logo on the celebrity T-shirt or the handbag. In a pioneering article in the first issue of Another Magazine, Mark Sanders teased out the origins of Korda's aesthetic, having interviewed him shortly before his death in 2001. Korda, whose real name was Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, was born in Havana in 1928 and worked as a young man as a fashion photographer. He photographed the beau monde of the Batista era before the revolution, and models queued up outside his studio to have their picture taken. He aimed to be the Richard Avedon of Cuba. Taken by surprise by the guerrilla victory of 1959, he worked subsequently with Raúl Corrales, Castro's official photographer, to capture the excitement of the revolution. In his image of Che, something survives of his earlier experience with beautiful women. With the extraordinarily long hair and wispy beard, it is a strikingly androgynous portrait, and in the 1970s it inevitably appeared on a poster as "Che Gay".

Judging by the accompanying book, edited by Trisha Ziff, the exhibition will leave much to be desired. The book is a superficial and sloppy piece of historical reporting that relies considerably for its best sections on the expertise of David Kunzle, a brilliant exponent of poster art at UCLA. Kunzle has written a much better book, Che Guevara: Icon, Myth and Message, the text for an earlier exhibition at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, in 1998. Yet such is the enduring public appetite for anything remotely connected with Guevara, in all his many representations, this latest show will surely be hugely popular, if only for the graphics. · Che Guevara: Revolutionary and Icon is on show at the V&A, London SW7, from Wednesday until August 28.

Tickets: 0870 906 3883, Richard Gott's Cuba: A New History, is published by Yale University Press, £9.99 ALBERTO KORDA Ebullient Cuban photographer whose portrait of Che Guevara became an icon for a generation of protest Michael Chanan; Sunday 27 May 2001 21.03 EDT The Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, who has died of a heart attack aged 72 while visiting Paris for an exhibition of his work, will be best remembered for his portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara - one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, and one of the few that truly deserve to be called iconic. Born in Havana, the son of a railway worker, the young Alberto had a variety of jobs before he started working as a photographer's assistant. He was a runner for a betting shop and a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman. He took up photography with frankly macho motives: "My main aim was to meet women," he once confessed.

"I wanted to be near beautiful women." He succeeded by marrying Cuba's most beautiful model of the day, Niurka, though his three marriages ended in divorce. Naturally charming and ebullient, the diminutive and wiry Alberto soon established himself as a successful fashion photographer, changing his surname from Díaz Gutiérrez to that of the British film-maker Alexander Korda because it sounded like "Kodak" to his Cuban ear. He soon had his own studio in Havana, and an expensive playboy lifestyle. Like so many of his compatriots, his life was transformed by the Cuban revolution of 1959. On an assignment in the countryside soon after the guerrillas defeated the dictator Batista, he encountered such poverty that he was converted to the revolutionary cause. He began to follow the new Cuban leaders around, offering his photos to the newspaper Revolución, whose offices were close to his studios. He spent 10 years as Fidel Castro's official photographer, using his skills to humanise the revolutionary leader's image in off-duty scenes - sharing moments with Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre, or confronting a caged tiger at the New York Zoo.

It was while on an assignment for Revolución in 1960 that Korda took the famous photo of Che, at a protest rally after a Belgian freighter carrying arms to Cuba was blown up by counter-revolutionaries while being unloaded in Havana harbour, killing more than 100 dock workers. As he later recalled, it was a damp, cold day. Using a 90mm lens, he was panning his Leica across the figures on the dais when Che's face jumped into the viewfinder. The look in Che's eyes startled Korda so much that he instinctively lurched backwards, and immediately pressed the button: "There appears to be a mystery in those eyes, but in reality it is just blind rage at the deaths of the day before, and the grief for their families." Ironically, Korda's picture was relegated to an inside page of Revolución, giving pride of place to Fidel.

The original remained on the wall of his studio until 1967, when he gave two 10" x 8" prints of it as a gift to the leftwing Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (the man who first published Dr Zhivago in the West, and who was blown up by a car-bomb in 1972). A few weeks later, Che was captured and killed in Bolivia - and became an instant martyr. When Castro addressed a memorial rally in Havana's Plaza de la Revolución, Korda's photo was used as a mural on the building facing the podium; it is still there. Feltrinelli instantly spotted the value of the image, using one print for the cover of Che's diaries, and giving the other to the makers of the posters which were soon being carried through the streets of Europe in the protest marches of 1968. This image of Che, noble and defiant, with tilted beret and flowing locks, rapidly spread to T-shirts and album covers, and was soon taken up by advertisers targeting youth, until it rivalled the Mona Lisa as perhaps the most replicated image ever.

But Korda received no royalties; Feltrinelli had used the photo without permission, and even failed to credit him as the photographer. In any case, Korda had no remedy until Cuba rejoined the international copyright convention in 1997. Finally, angered when the image appeared in a Smirnoff advert in Britain - Che never drank - he asked the Cuba Solidarity Campaign to help him sue Smirnoff's advertising agency, Lowe Lintas, and the picture library, Rex Features, for infringement. By happy coincidence, he received the news of an out-of-court settlement on his birthday last year, during a visit to London for the Cuba, Si! exhibition of Cuban photography at the National Theatre. He immediately handed over an undisclosed sum to buy much-needed medicine for Cuban children. A lifelong smoker and rum drinker, Korda told marvellous anecdotes of the ascetic revolutionaries. "Once, I had to take pictures of Che cutting cane with the workers," he said. "He made me work for a week cutting cane before he'd let me take a shot.

He was hard that way." From 1968-78, Korda concentrated on underwater photography, until a Japanese exhibition in 1978 stimulated international interest in his work. From the early 1980s, he lived in modest semi-retirement, though he accompanied Castro on a recent visit to Venezuela and Mexico. In 1999, he appeared in the pre-title sequence of Wim Wenders's documentary, Buena Vista Social Club, rifling through photos from the heroic early days - here is Che, for example, playing golf with Castro ("Who won?" "Fidel, because Che let him") - which ends with an image of a demonstration outside the US embassy that Korda called "David and Goliath". For some reason, Wenders fails to credit him. Speaking in Havana late last year, Korda, who leaves two sons and two daughters, said: "Life may not have granted me a great fortune in money, but it has given me the even greater fortune of becoming a figure in the history of photography." The Cuba Si!

exhibition, which includes some of Korda's work, is at the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, until June 16, and at Wingfield Arts, Eye, Suffolk, from July 7 until September 30.  Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez (Korda), photographer, born September 17 1928; died May 25 2001

Question: In 1960 , Alberto Korda took an iconic photograph of which revolutionary leader ?
Answer: CHE GUEVERA