‘Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image’ by Michael Casey

Che’s Afterlife

The Legacy of an Image

Michael Casey

Vintage: 388 pp., $15.95 paper

We’ve all seen the photograph: Che Guevara in his beret and scraggly beard, staring purposefully into the distance as if facing down destiny. Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960, it has become ubiquitous, Michael Casey notes in “Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image,” “simultaneously a potent symbol of resistance in the developing world, an anti-globalization banner, and a favored sales vehicle among globally engaged marketing executives.”

Yet if this seems like one more example of corporate co-optation, the reality, Casey suggests, is more complex. Rather, “the photo is at once an advertising tool for ‘tribal marketers’ selling just about any consumer product imaginable and a lasting symbol of resistance to the capitalist system promoting such products. The image seems to resonate with this self-contained irony.”

“Che’s Afterlife” is an attempt to parse that irony, by using Korda’s picture to trace Guevara’s impact as a cultural icon. It’s a terrific idea, because more than 40 years after his execution in the Bolivian jungle, the revolutionary remains a potent metaphor around the world.

Casey traces this notion of infiltration, of cross-pollination, of how, in an image-based culture, content and context are inextricably interwoven, and almost never in the ways we intend. The photo is a perfect example: a snapshot that became a symbol, whether as a banner in street protests or on T-shirts for the liberal and well-heeled. “Che,” Casey writes, “became the quintessential postmodern icon -- anything to anyone and everything to everyone.”

Casey is the Buenos Aires bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires, and “Che’s Afterlife” is very well-reported, with copious interviews and sourcing. Where the book runs into problems, however, is in the depth of its analysis. For all the acuity of his concept, Casey isn’t quite up to the interpretive requirements of the project, relying too often on bromides about the power of the image, about the way the photograph “offers a taste of immortality.” This, of course, is true of all photos, because they are immediate and impenetrable. Still, if these qualities are part of the Che mystique, Casey never fully excavates them in this fascinating, but occasionally frustrating, book.

Ulin is book editor of The Times.

david.ulin@latimes.com