The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

“commercial commodity”, a “poster to be sold” along with those of rock stars and
Hollywood celebrities. 131
While Freddy Alborta’s image of Guevara’s dead body may have contributed to the
creation of the Che myth, the photograph that undoubtedly came to stand for the
memory of Guevara more than any other is undoubtedly that taken by Alberto Díaz
Gutiérrez (who called himself Alberto Korda) in 1960 at a memorial service. The
service had been held for more than 80 crewmembers of a European arms cargo ship,
who had been killed in an attack for which Cuba blamed the United States. Korda had
been assigned to cover the rally, which had drawn a number of foreign celebrities such
as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean‐Paul Sartre. As Korda’s camera scanned the stage for
celebrities during Fidel Castro’s address, it found an angry and grieved Guevara, who
had leant forward briefly with “an absolute look of steely defiance” on his face. 132
For Korda, it was indeed ironic that this photograph came to be “admired worldwide
as personifying Che the serene, even sweet visionary”. Korda’s magazine chose not to
publish this photograph, and it lay dormant for seven years, hanging on a wall in his
Havana studio. In 1967, it left the domain of the private studio and was transformed
into the central image in the cultural production of Che Guevara, especially after his
death. It was reproduced and circulated in innumerable ways, spawning “a host of
graphic and other derivatives, and innumerable posterised versions”. In the process,
Korda’s photograph became a “Messianic image”, twentieth century icon, and pin‐up
of radical students around the world. 133 It also came to stand for the mythical dead
131 David Kunzle, Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message, pp 21‐24.
132 David Kunzle, Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message, p 58
133 David Kunzle, Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message, p 58; in another case, Magnum photographer
René Burri took a photograph in 1963 of Guevara leaning back and smoking a cigar, which also
became one of the signal images of Che that came to be symbolic of the Cuban revolution. The image
appeared in many books and magazines and on T‐shirts and posters in different parts of the world.
The photograph was also displayed in Guevara’s honour in a Cuban bank in the 1960s, probably
during the time when he was president of the National Bank. In this commemorative position in
Cuba’s financial life the photograph was claimed as part of the nation’s patrimony and when Burri, its
original creator, attempted “to take a picture of his picture” for “his own amusement”, he was
promptly arrested. See Russell Miller, Magnum: Fifty Years at the Frontline of History – the Story of the
Legendary Photo Agency (London: Secker & Warburg, 1997), p 200. This photograph was also used in a
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