Photographs of Che Guevara / London Institute Gallery

Photographs of Che

Guevara

London Institute Gallery

When the Marxist Cuban guerrilla Che Guevara was shot dead, the Bolivian military authorities unwittingly made the man they killed into an icon.

To prove that Guevara, having "disappeared" from Cuba in 1964, was really dead, they invited a plane load of the world's press to view the body. His beautiful, bearded, bereted face, with its fierce eyes, was splashed across the front pages, and became as famous as the image of Christ.

Fidel Castro's guerrilla war, which Che Guevara had hoped to take to the mainland of Latin America, culminated in the 1959 Cuban revolution.

There is an irony in exhibiting pictures of a guerrilla whose basic security procedures were flaunted by press photographers, but many previously unpublished photographs are shown here, including some of Che's family.

Jennifer Rodger