BY GEOFF MIRELOWITZ
SEATTLE - More than 500 people turned out to meet and hear
acclaimed Cuban photographer Alberto Korda during a three-day
visit here. An overflow, standing-room-only crowd of more than
300 filled a Seattle University event October 30 for Korda's
slide show and lecture titled, "Cuba: Diary of a Revolution."
Korda accompanied Cuban leader Fidel Castro in an official capacity from 1959 to 1969. Korda's photographic images are among the best known of that era. Perhaps his most well-known photo, of Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara titled, "Heroic Guerrilla," is among the most reproduced images in the history of photography.
Prior to the Cuban revolution in 1959 Korda was a prominent fashion photographer. With tens of thousands of other Cubans he was in the streets of Havana to greet the Rebel Army led by the July 26 Movement and Fidel Castro as they marched into the city that January. Korda, attracted as he explained, "by the power of the moment," took a photograph - also well known - of Castro and rebel army leader Camilo Cienfuegos. He donated the photo to the newspaper Revolución, an organ of the July 26 Movement, which ran it prominently. Shortly thereafter, Korda explained, the director of the newspaper appointed him Castro's personal photographer for a trip to Venezuela and New York. In that capacity he continued to travel with the Cuban revolutionary leader across Cuba and the world.
Korda told the crowd, "I feel honored that a Cuban and a revolutionary can be welcomed at this university." In showing one slide, an early photo titled, "The child with a doll made of wood," he described his experience traveling with Castro to a peasant village. There he photographed the child, who looked in amazement at Korda's photographic apparatus as she stroked a piece of wood. Her family was so poor she did not even have a doll. That moment helped Korda decide "to devote my life to the revolution that would change these inequalities." That devotion has "continued to today, and I am 70 years old."
In response to a question about cultural life in Cuba now, Korda explained that the revolution opened the doors of culture to most Cubans for the first time. "Cuban culture under capitalism was very poor," the photographer said. Most people did not have access to the most elementary materials to create art of any kind. The revolution changed that.
Cuba remains a relatively poor country economically, and one that has suffered from decades of a U.S. trade embargo. Korda noted that despite enormous advances in many fields of art and the opening of arts education to ordinary people, there is still no photography school. The reason is economic. Photographic supplies - from cameras to film, chemicals, photographic paper, and machinery - are very expensive. Nevertheless, he noted a burgeoning interest in photography in Cuba and an enormous increase in interest in the subject among young women.
A questioner asked Korda, "So what do you think of Mr. Castro?"
"First," Korda replied, "no one calls him `Mr.' Everyone calls him Fidel." This is how Castro prefers it, Korda said, because the Cuban president is not interested in titles. Castro, Korda continued, "is one of the most important men of the 20th century." When the revolution triumphed, Korda explained, some people thought it would not last very long. "But here we are 40 years later."
Korda's visit was organized by a group of Seattle area photographers with support from the Seattle-Cuba Friendship Committee and others. A reception for the photographer attracted more than 200 people to the Photo Center Gallery on November 1. Korda's work is on display at the gallery, located at 900 Twelfth Ave., Seattle, through November 30. His trip began in Los Angeles, where an exhibit of Korda's work is showing at Couturier Gallery, 166 N. La Brea Ave., through November 28.
Geoff Mirelowitz is a member of United Transportation Union Local 845.