Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image

Michael J. Casey

Jun 2012 · Kuthengiswe ngu-Vintage

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In 1960, Cuban photographer Alberto Korda captured fabled revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara in what has become history's most reproduced photo. Here Michael Casey tells the remarkable story of this image, detailing its evolution from a casual snapshot to an omnipresent graphic—plastered on everything from T-shirts to vodka to condoms—and into a copyrighted brand. As Casey follows it across the Americas and through cyberspace, he finds governments exploiting it and their dissenters attacking it, merchants selling it and tourists buying it. We see how this image is, ultimately, a mercurial icon that still ignites passion—and a reflection of how we view ourselves.

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Michael Casey is writer and researcher in the fields of economics, finance, and digital technology and culture. Since the summer of 2015, he has been employed as Senior Advisor for the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT's renowned Media Lab, while also providing consulting services and speaking globally on the evolving digital governance of the global economy. Before his MIT assignment, Casey spent 18 years at the Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently a senior columnist covering global economics and markets. He is the author of four books: Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image (Vintage, 2009); The Unfair Trade: How Our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class (Crown, 2012); The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain are Challenging the Global Economic Order (co-authored with Paul Vigna; St. Martin's Press, 2015); and The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life (co-authored with Oliver Luckett; Hachette, 2016).