How a picture took over the world

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

It's said to be the most reproduced image in the history of photography, and it makes an excellent documentary.

Chevolution focuses on photographer Alberto 'Korda’ Diaz' 1960 image of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, taken during a mass funeral, and tracks the route by which it became an international symbol of protest and dissent.

It also became a marketing tool for an enormous variety of products, including alcohol - a capitalist coup of which neither Che nor Korda would have approved.

Korda's picture, remembers his daughter, "was just another picture that he was taking. It was his job." It was not even published the next day, though the former society photographer who became politicised by the Cuban revolution liked it and filed it away. Years later, when he turned up for Che's funeral, he saw the image on a poster in the crowd: "Damn! Look at my photo."

It was in the student uprisings of May 1968 that the picture really emerged and took off, boosted by other hands, such as Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick who used the image to create his own stylised posters and sent into orbit, copyright-free – "I wanted it to breed like rabbits."

The image also fed off and into the pop art and op art movements and the growing taste for celebrity. The face became separated from its background and from its historical moment: it was an image that could be from and for anywhere, unlike other iconic images such as the flag on Iwo Jima or the naked girl fleeing napalm in Vietnam.

Since the 1990s the Korda family has been trying to regain control of the image, and artists, businesses and pop groups are among those who have found themselves on the receiving end of lawyers’ letters. "They [the family] are moving towards a more corporate model," says one pundit – another twist in this tale of our times.

A film about a photo might sound static and academic, but don't be put off: the archive footage and the talking heads (who include Gerry Adams, Antonio Banderas and Gael García Bernal) are entertaining, and at times the film moves too fast rather than too slowly. The brief reference to Che's unsuccessful and little-known Congo adventure, for example, will leave most viewers none-the-wiser.

It's also an intelligent film, perhaps not surprisingly since it is based on an exhibition and book by co-director and academic Trisha Ziff. And it's not a simple paean of praise to the Argentinian doctor turned guerrilla leader: it gives screen time to articulate people who dismiss his violent, undemocratic approach to politics. And as one observer tartly recalls, "No matter what he started, he didn’t finish."

His image certainly isn't finished. In the words of an Australian photography historian, "It goes on and on."

* Chevolution is at the ICA, The Mall, SW1, until 7 October