The Revolution is Korda

 On the 5^th of March 1960, 32 year old fashion photographer Alberto Korda took a snapshot of what would become one of the most widely recognized images in history; the Guerrillero Heroico. The image is a portrait of Argentinean Marxist rebel leader Che Guevara.  To put the photo in context; Che had just arrived at the scene of an exploded Belgiuan ship at the port of Havana which had killed 136 men. Alberto Korda managed to capture the somewhat ‘dignified disgust’ or anger in Che’s facial expression. How you interpret the Guerrillio Heroico is up to you, but one thing is certain, this image will continue to be reproduced for years to come because it is intense, and powerful. 

 

Guerrillero Heroico still resonates   5 decades later, and it is found on everything from coffee mugs to t-shirts. Alberto Korda’s famous masterpiece hung in his bathroom for 7 years before an Italian publisher by the name Giangiacomo Fetrinelli visited him in Havana. It has become a symbol for rebellion, and in some cases, hope. Due to Fidel Castro’s refusal to sign the Berne Convention, Korda couldn’t receive any royalties for his intellectual property, until the early 1990s when a London court prevented the use of the image in a Smirnoff advertising campaign for copyright reasons. Alberto Korda passed away in Paris in 2001, but because of his strong image, this revolution will continue forever. 

Kimiko Yoshida: a Zen Baroque Monochromic affair

Seductive minimalism in photography is uncommon, but Kimiko Yoshida has managed to achieve it through her work. She “fled” her native Japan to come to France because of what she calls the “mortifying servitude and humiliating fate of Japanese women”, and this is reflected through the disappearing women in her Self Portraits. The use of monochrome adds to the disappearing woman who is there but not there, so she is a woman in hiding. Hiding from what? She says in a statement that these Self Portraits are a “representation” herself, and not a “reflection” of herself. I had a conversation about one’s identity with a friend of mine; I said identity is one’s religion, culture, and beliefs. Kimiko Yoshida states that her ’quest for identity’ has led her to realize that she is not everything she says she is. So the woman in hiding is hiding from who she is because she is not what she says she is. 

Kimiko Yoshida applies a ‘flat’ method to her lighting, which is common in most Japanese photography and cinematography. The lack of shadows in her photographic work creates the lack of desire, a very minimalistic, Zen-like approach. Perhaps this is why she says: “To show doesn’t mean giving us everything to see, to look means seeing that something escapes the gaze”. Another interesting aspect of her work is in the idea of the Brides. Behind these Brides is her face, in other words, a Japanese woman behind what is perceived to us as a Kenyan woman’s identity. These images leave me shocked and inspired at the same time. They also give me hope; hope that maybe one day we can look past what has already been presented to us as being us.