What distinguished Corrales’s work was his ability to capture the revolution’s mass proletarian character. He showed the ordinary men and women of Cuba as the decisive actors determining the course of the Cuban Revolution at every stage.

Among his most widely published photographs are those of the tumultuous welcome that greeted the Rebel Army's entrance into Havana in January 1959, when the revolution triumphed; of the popular support for the revolutionary militias and the agrarian reform; and of Fidel Castro leading the revolutionary forces in battle against the 1961 U.S.-organized mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

A number of these photos appear in books published by Pathfinder Press. These include Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas, From the Escambray to the Congo, To Speak the Truth, and others.

Corrales’s stunning photo of a revolutionary militia unit assembling on Havana's seafront boulevard in January 1961 as U.S. invasion threats escalated, fills the cover of Making History, a collection of interviews with four generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces.

A number of those who worked on preparing these books, including this writer, had the opportunity to get to know Corrales over the years, visiting him many times at his home in Cojímar, east of Havana.

Corrales was deeply appreciative of the accuracy and quality of Pathfinder's books and pamphlets that make the truth of the Cuban Revolution accessible to new generations of working people and youth in the United States and around the world. He understood that the photo sections in these books helped bring the story to life and was pleased that many of his photos were among them. He often suggested photos of his own and others he thought might be of use, and went out of his way to get quality prints made for Pathfinder’s use.

Not only did he provide photos. He would read the book after it was published. One could be confident that during the next visit he would comment on its content.

More than once he remarked on how important he thought the footnotes and glossaries were, allowing any person picking up the book—including in Cuba—to be able to find out about unfamiliar events and individuals.

Born into a poor family in rural Cuba in 1925, Corrales moved to Havana as a youth. He worked as a newspaper vendor, a shoeshine boy, and a janitor, but photography was a more and more serious hobby. In the early 1950s he became a photographer for Hoy, newspaper of the Popular Socialist Party. Many of his photographs were also published in large-circulation magazines such as Bohemia and Carteles.

Corrales specialized in going to the most remote parts of Cuba to photograph the lives of landless peasants, charcoal workers, sugarcane cutters, nickel miners, and other toilers.

All but a handful of his negatives and prints from before 1959 were destroyed by the Batista dictatorship's police in various raids, Corrales told us.

In the early years of the revolution Corrales worked for Revolución, the newspaper of the July 26 Movement, and other publications. He was one of Fidel Castro’s official photographers between 1959 and 1961. He later worked for two and a half decades in the Office of Historical Affairs established by revolutionary leader Celia Sánchez, helping to preserve and organize the revolution’s documentary and photographic legacy.

Despite being one of the premier world photographers of the 20th century, it was not the desire for fame and riches that drove him. With deep modesty, Corrales once told Cuban writer and journalist Ciro Bianchi Ross that his overriding passion was the Cuban Revolution. “I am a noted photo reporter because of an accident: It was the revolution that gave me the opportunity of being a witness to events that are now history.”  
 
 
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