Spent some time this morning working on a robot ‘plate’ effect in photoshop. Not totally happy with how it turned out on the face but the body is pretty ok. This is again for a tutorial I’m writing! Will post the link soon.
On our first trip to Argentina, we met a man called Dan Greene. I remember him clearly, a huge bulk of a man with grey hair, wrapped up warm in a dark coat and scarf. Anthony and I were walking on a busy shopping street in short sleeves and open toe shoes in the middle of August (the Argentinian winter!!). Being used to the cold Irish weather the Argentinian winter was just an average day in our summer … nothing to get wrapped up for! We heard somebody call out, “Aren’t you cold?” and when we turned around Dan Greene was shouting at us from a short distance, while gesturing at his coat. He soon approached and the conversation started. Yes, Dan Greene was Argentinian Irish and so we were practically family! He told us all about his leather import business, gave us a business card and invited us to call him if we ever returned!
Dan is what we loved about the Argentinian people, genuine and warm people. What I remember most about Dan is what he told us about Che. Perhaps Alberto Korda’s Guerrillero Heroico was peering at us from some T-shirt stand or maybe Dan always talked to tourists about Che! Che, Dan explained was not Guevara’s name but a term of affection, particular to Argentinians, used to call the attention of a pal, like hey buddy!. Che used this expression so much it became the name Cubans, and later the world, knew him by.
Guerrillero Heroico – The Most Famous Photo In The World
What was obvious was that Dan Greene had a great admiration for Che Guevara. And rightly so! Che is the ultimate symbol of self-sacrifice. A medical doctor and intellectual, a poet who had a passion for all subjects from engineering to literature to archaeology, Che could have lived the life most Argentinian men dreamed of at the time. Instead he chose the revolutionary path, deeply troubled by the inequalities he saw in his beloved South America. He validated the moral, ethical and even aesthetic reasons for “La Revolution” in a way that Fidel Castro could never have achieved. Castro, though politically astute, lacked Che’s natural charismatic presence. I imagine Castro hated Che for this, since Castro despised politicians wanting instead to be seen as a man for the people!
The great tragedy of Che Guevara’s life was that he died ultimately betrayed by the people he was trying to liberate. Che had a vision that the whole of South America would be liberated from the inequalities of Capitalism, headed by the US. This brought him to the jungle in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA backed Bolivian Special Forces and later executed. When asked before his death if he was thinking of his immortality, he answered “No, I’m thinking about the immortality of the revolution.” When a half drunken and cowardly Sergeant Terán hesitated on shooting Che (most likely because of pressure to make sure the bullets looked like battle wounds rather than execution shots), Che Guevara told him
“I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!”
Che Guevara lived this life of humility without question. He was a man who claimed that a true revolutionary is driven by love, love for his country, the people in it, love for freedom. Che loved. He was heart broken by the poverty he saw. Even as a doctor, before his association with Cuba, Castro and the Revolution, he suffered for the deprivation he witnessed while treating the poorest of the poor. At one point, he became obsessed with an elderly washer-woman who symbolised for him everything that was wrong in South America. He later wrote a poem which he dedicated to her. She was everything he fought for.
Perhaps one other thing that makes Che Guevara particularly interesting to me is his Irish roots! It’s not so well known that many people left Ireland for South America, taking advantages of opportunities that came with the vast amount of land there. Dan Greene’s ancestors may have been among them but Che’s Guevara’s were too. Che’s father Ernesto Guevara Lynch was of Irish descent. On speaking about his son’s restlessness he said in an 1969 interview (2 years after Che was murdered)
“The first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels.”
Che's father in the centre with Che on the far left. There's no mistaking the Irish head on Ernesto Senior!
It’s been an age since I used Photoshop for anything creative (I’m afraid making web menus and gradient backgrounds doesn’t count!) so I took some time today to refresh whatever skills I had and created this image. I don’t know how to describe it really. It’s fantasy so anything goes, right?
I’ll be posting a tutorial on how to create this image on a site I’m developing soon so I’ll post the link when it’s up and running!
Tracey Meagher | Create your badge
I’m a web designer, internet marketer, writer of very odd poetry, digital artist, film lover, mother of four, wanna be photographer, happy go lucky, agnostic dog lover. This is my blog.
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