How I came to choose the iconic image of Che Guevara
My first reaction to this assignment was to look at adverts such as the one in New Scientist which I analysed in terms of its signifiers and what I thought they signified.[I] I felt this approach would not allow me to explore in the same way as a more ‘artistic’ image might. I had to look further.
I considered Ruth Orkin’s picture of An American Girl in Italy which I have seen in restaurants and hotels here and there as decorative art across Europe. It is not just the fifteen or so men in that picture who ogle the girl but conversations in hotel bars often mirror what is going on in the image. The contrast between the innocence of the young girls having an adventure in Italy and the ideological arguments about the image would offer many opportunities to fulfil the brief of this assignment, but I found it difficult to resist the temptation to have a full on rant despite what Ninalee Craig, the girl in the picture, says about it now 66 years later.[ii]
I visited an exhibition of images by Martin Parr and Tony Ray-Jones at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle in Co. Durham[iii]. I was very impressed by their pictures but, thinking in terms of this assignment, their pictures did not seem to me to offer much scope for talking about ‘what happened next’. I also needed to see how other people wrote about photographs. I was lucky enough to get a second hand copy of Sophie Howarth’s book, Singular Images. I read this making notes on the ‘how’ of what her contributors wrote as well as on the ‘what’. One sentence struck me in particular. She wrote, “By don’t of their reproducibility, photographs have a tendency to become unhinged from their original context and to reappear in unexpected and often incongruous places.”[iv] While this was certainly true of An American Girl in Italy I began to think about the image of Che Guevara and his image appeared in strange places.
The exhibition at Bowes Museum included a short film on how the photographs came to be made. Saying how a picture is made draws attention to the process and directs the viewer to see it in a particular way. Giving it a date, for example, invites consideration of a historical context. It was very noticeable in the case of Martin Parr that what we see is affected by how we see and by the character of the observer. It made me think about seeing things from a cultural, personal and educational background. (I see a rat and think dystopia. Nelson’s midshipmen looked at rats and saw food.)
The weakness of images in respect of meaning[v] allows all manner of speculation about what an image can mean. Barthes talks about the “obtuse” meaning which “appears to extend outside culture, knowledge, information; analytically it has something derisory about it: opening out into the infinity of language, it can come through as limited in the eyes of analytic reasoning; it belongs to the family of pun, buffoonery, useless expenditure. Indifferent to moral or aesthetic categories (the trivial, the futile, the false, the pastiche), it is on the side of carnival.”[vi] My thoughts began to focus on images that have been used and misused and began to centre on Korda’s image of Che Guevara and Ruth Orkin’s American Girl both of which would illustrate Barthe’s thought.
I was looking for an image which would allow the kind of essay plan and personal response shown by Sophie Howarth’s contributors. The image also had to be amenable to mention/discussion of translation, interpretation, connotation, sign, signifier, signified, punctum and stadium. These are easier to discuss in relation to images by Gregory Crewdson, for example, than to images by Hiroshi Sugimoto. I was conscious of the assignment tail wagging the dog of how I reacted to various images but after my last not particularly successful assignment I wanted an image that would allow me to tick all the boxes.
Putting these thoughts together I chose to write abut the iconic image of Che Guevara taken by Alberto (Korda) Diaz Gutiérrez in 1960. Following the examples of plans derived from Sophie Howarth’s contributors I made this plan:
· How I came across the image
· How this image came to be taken
· The image itself
· How the image has been received
I was very conscious of the 1000 word limit and had to be very selective. I chose not to include a comparison with this image, for example, a copy of which hangs in the Bowes Museum. I could have commented on the heavenward gaze, the contraposto and how Che’s image expresses heroic nobility while this, despite being so similar, expresses distress. I could have said more about the symbolism in the Che image, his beret and single star, his beard and unruly hair and compared it with the rich symbolism of the El Greco.
I might also have compared the portrait style with these, also by Korda which show the same angle of the shoulders and turn of the head.
Evaluation
The criteria derived from the brief are:
· Is the photograph well known?
· Has the context of the photograph been well researched?
· Are there comments on the intentions of the photographer?
· Does the essay say why the photograph was taken?
· Is there a personal opinion about what the image means to the writer?
· Does the essay show an awareness of the technical terms mentioned in the assignment brief?
· Does the essay follow thought associations and other related images?
· Does the essay show an awareness of the wider context of the image?
· Does the essay use its sources sensibly and accurately?
I have taken care to show that each of these criteria has been met within the word limit.
I enjoyed researching this image and was very pleased to be able to get a copy of Sophie Howarth’s book. My work on Assignment 3 was confused. I enjoyed being much more rigorous about this one.
[I] https://christopherwlog.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/part-4-reading-photographs-project-2-reading-pictures/
[ii] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/30/europe/tbt-ruth-orkin-american-girl-in-italy/index.html
[iii] http://www.bowesmuseum.org.uk
[iv] Howarth, S. (2005) Singular Images. London. Tate Publishing
[v] Barthes, R. trans Heath, S. (1977) Image, Music, Text. London, Fontana Press
[vi] ibid.
Chris Whittle 