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• 09 / 22 / 2008

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And it was not little what he did: there might not have been in Latin America during the fifties another photographer who was capable of reflecting the world of fashion with so much depth and foresight.
The signature of the Studio Korda (it was written like that, in the “American” fashion) became his personal signature, that of Alberto Korda, the head of a trio of photographers (Luis and Genovevo) who changed their surname for that of a famous British movie director with an Hungarian origin (Alexander Korda, who made The private life of Henry VIII) whose written form tended to remind people of the main label of the queen of movies, the Kodak empire.

But in Alberto, Carlos Puebla’s guaracha changed its verb: the Commander came and ordered a change. Korda changed and in what a way. He registered the leader of the revolution with preciseness and imagination during those long days of epic transformation and he took the pulse of the people in the streets and plazas, who were for the first time the main characters in their own destiny.
And he did that not just by being in the right moment and place, but because of his enormous sensibility and more than proven talent, he managed his very famous picture of Ernesto Guevara that have traveled several times the world around.

That is the closest Korda. But not the only one. That is why the exhibition Korda, conocido, desconocido (Korda, known, unknown), opened in the Cuban Photo Archive, is a true recognition of a graphic piece, which we can not miss.

In a very meritorious museum exhibition - Cristina Vives and Diana Díaz, this one being his daughter and executor, acted as curators of the exhibition, a work in which José A. Figueroa, who was one of the best students of the photographer, also took part- the spectator gets in contact with many images never seen before, taken by Korda and of Korda to reach the number of 170 pieces plus 35 huge size posters.

The theme of the exhibition allows us to follow the development of an aesthetic conception of photography: fashion, leaders, the people, the sea, a varied and intense register in which we may see the sagaciousness of the compositions, the poetry of the gesture, the balance of the spaces, the contraposition between the photographed subjects and their context and the power of suggestion beyond the data set in each picture.

On anessay about Korda, the North American critic Bill Lazarow noted how even in the most epic moments of his work, the artist managed to make metaphors and open ways for understanding of reality beyond the graphical event itself.

In recent days the artist would have become 80 years old. If death had not surprised him on May 25, 2001, Korda would have certainly increased his work, since he was always open to creation.

(Cubarte)