Guerrillero Heroico

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Guerrillero Heroico

Guerrillero Heroico (English: Heroic Guerrilla Fighter) is an iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. 

It was captured on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the La Coubre explosion. 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 photos of Che Guevara -- one vertical and one horizontal.

The day before Alberto Korda took his iconic photograph of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, a ship had exploded in Havana Harbour, killing the crew and dozens of dockworkers. 
Covering the funeral for the newspaper Revolución, Korda focused on Fidel Castro, who in a fiery speech accused the U.S. of causing the explosion. 

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. 

A couple of months before Che’s death, Italian publisher and businessman Giangiacomo Feltrinelli knocked on Korda’s door in Havana. He’d arrived in Cuba directly from Bolivia, ask for a good picture of Che.

Korda pointed to his studio wall, where the picture passed over by Revolución—a newspaper which no longer existed—was still hanging. “This is my best picture of Che,” he said.
Feltrinelli asked for two copies, and the next day Korda made two eight-by-ten prints.

October 1967, when Guevara was killed leading a guerrilla movement in Bolivia. Demonstrations broke out around the world condemning the murder and Giangiacomo Feltrinelli printed up many thousands of Che Guevara 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.

In short order, Guerrillero Heroico was appropriated by artists, causes and admen around the world, appearing on everything from protest art to underwear to soft drinks. It has become the cultural shorthand for rebellion and one of the most recognizable and reproduced images of all time, with its influence long since transcending its steely-eyed subject.

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.

Andy Warhol Che Guevara (1968)

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 now is just an image 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 Saintly Christ-like. 

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, Cuba.