Monday, June 24, 2013

Vintage Korda on its way to Oregon

See that shrink wrapped photo lying on my kitchen island and awaiting for an art courier to pick it up (which she did yesterday)? - that's the very first, original, vintage Korda photograph of the Argentinean psychopath Ernesto Guevara de La Serna Lynch, known to most of the world as Ché and to many Cubans as El Chacal de La Cabaña.

That photo, together with 16 other vintage Kordas from 1959 - 1960s are heading to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum at The University of Oregon for an extended loan.

Korda's iconic photo of Guevara (titled "Guerrillero Heroico") is the most reproduced photograph in history, thanks to the billions of T-Shirts that it adorns. I am told that recent appraisals put its value at around $4.5 million dollars.

I'm glad that it is out of my house and on its way to the Great Pacific Northwest. It's a good thing that the kid has nerves of steel, as I picked it up from the owners' home in Chevy Chase and transported it to my home so that the courier could pick it up yesterday. She came with a crew that boxed it up in a very cool carrying case.

The world's most reproduced and iconic photograph (and perhaps the most expensive as well) made its way to a collector's home in the Greater DC area thanks to a very interesting series of events after Korda died a few years ago.

Che Guevara photo Guerrillero Heroice - vintage 1960 by Korda - 1st one ever!

The two top most reproduced images in the world are bearded men: The Christ and Ché...  cough, cough...

Now it's on a permanent loan to Oregon, which this Fall begins to teach a new class on Guevara.