Photography "Ernesto Che Guevara"

Original quotation from René Burri: "At the start of 1963, I was commissioned to travel to Cuba: Laura Bergquist, the star reporter, had been contracted to write a story on Che Guevara and the "new Cuba" after the 1958 revolution. Thanks in part to my "neutral" Swiss passport, I was awarded the contract to work on the visuals. The blinds were drawn when we arrived in Che's office. Che curtly declined my request to raise them slightly so as to provide more light. So for over three hours, I took photographs without flash. Bergquist, with her film-star looks, immediately became involved in the cut-and-thrust of an intense discussion with Che, who paced back and forth like a predatory animal in a cage. This gave me the opportunity to flit around the pair of them, almost unnoticed. This was a unique chance to photograph Che in every conceivable pose and from every angle: smiling, furious, gesticulating, from behind and frontally. None of us initially thought there was anything at all special about the image that was to become so famous later on. In fact, when it was first published (in 'Look' on 9 April 1963), it was heavily cropped."