Book of Castro shots by iconic Che Guevara snapper published in Spain

Cuban photographer Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, also known as Korda, in his Havana study in 2000
September 1, 2008

MADRID (AFP) — Pictures of Fidel Castro at the height of the Cuban revolution were published Monday in Spain in a new book by late Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, whose image of Che Guevara became a worldwide icon.

"Conocido. Desconocido," or "Known.Unkown," hit stores on Monday and contains 437 black-and-white photos, mostly of Castro taken in the Sierra Maestra, Cuba's largest mountain range, during the Cuban revolution in the late 1950s.

The book ends with Korda's last interview, reproduced from a British magazine, where he describes "anecdotes and the events surrounding his most powerful photos," publishers La Fabrica said in a statement.

Korda, who died from a heart attack in 2001 in Paris at the age of 72, took the photo for which he will be best remembered of Che wearing a beret and staring into the distance in March 1960.

It has since been reproduced on countless t-shirts, banners and posters, becoming an icon of left-wing revolutionaries and students worldwide.

He took dozens of other photos of Castro and Che playing golf and fishing or in the company of American author Ernest Hemingway or French writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.