Perhaps the most reproduced photograph in history, Guerrillero Heroico, depicting Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, sold 2 million copies following Che's death in October 1967. Alberto Korda, probably Cuba's most famous photojournalist, received neither payment nor credit as his photo circulated around the globe.

Born Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, he adopted Korda as both his surname and the name of his Havana studio because it sounded like Kodak, he said in a recent interview. Naming oneself, however obliquely, after a U.S. corporation isn't the best way to make inroads with Marxist revolutionaries, but Korda became known through his photography, not his political beliefs. Though he photographed 12 years of life in revolutionary Cuba, he is invariably linked with his image of the scowling yet beatific Guevara.

Korda took the photo in 1960, during a mass memorial service led by Fidel Castro after La Coubre, a French freighter loaded with weapons purchased from Belgium, exploded in Havana Harbor, killing 136 crew members and bystanders. During Castro's two-hour oratory, Che stepped up to the railing to look out over the crowd for only a few seconds, just long enough for Korda to click off two frames. Korda's editor at the newspaper Revolución ignored the picture, so Korda hung it on his studio wall, where it remained for seven years, until just before Che's death in Bolivia. Italian publisher Giacomo Feltrinelli, carrying a letter of introduction from the Cuban government, saw it there and asked for a couple of prints. Korda complied, refusing payment since the visitor was presented as "a friend of the revolution."