Luis Korda

Luis Antonio Peirce became Byers, known as Korda ( born January 17, 1912 in Manzanillo ( Cuba); † 10 December 1985, Havana ) was a Cuban photographer.

Biography

Born the son of a North American miner and a mother originating from Jamaica in Manzanillo Luis Antonio Peirce Byers founded in 1956 together with Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez in Havana, the company > Korda Studios <. The company name was unceremoniously borrowed from the well-known Hungarian- British film directors Alexander and Zoltan Korda and finally found also for the artists name for both photographers use: Luis became Korda the Elder ( Luis Korda ) and Alberto to Korda the Younger (Alberto Korda ). The services of the new company extended from the fashion and classic advertising photography, as for record label, insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, publicity photos for Bacardi and Hatuey, car sales companies, etc. to picture stories, for example about the most famous motor race in Cuba, the Carrera Oinar of Sagua la Grande del Rio over to Havana. Even before October 1956 on settled the two photographers her studio in the apartment No. 2 on the first floor of a building which was just opposite the Hotel Capri in formation at Calle 21 (No. 15, entre N y O) in Vedado and changed a few weeks later the name of the company in Korda Studios.

The studio community Korda differentiated neither their jobs nor in the documentation between the various authors, a property that also illustrates the neutral, several times changing studio stamp on the reverse sides of the paper prints. Luis was an excellent photographer and above all very skilled technically. However, he was less businessman and therefore strove not particularly hard at jobs. So it can be assumed that his share of photographic works be slightly less than that of his partner Alberto. Alberto Díaz photographed primarily as a companion and fellow traveler Fidel Castro, with whom he had a special relationship, but also Ernesto ' Che ' Guevara, whom he considered the merits rather arrogant, - a personal assessment, which he shared with many photographers.

The most famous recording of Luis Korda is also the most important photo of the Cuban revolution and represents the occurred on January 8, 1959 entry of the revolutionaries in Havana with Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos dar. at their peak

Due to the concern that the privately -owned company has studios Korda could fall nationalization victim on suitable Alberto Díaz and Luis Peirce in November 1966 in the form of a donation to the death, all related with the Revolution negative about the ' Oficina de Asuntos historicos <, which was then headed by Celia Sánchez. Nevertheless, two years later, and in the absence of both Korda 's, the company closed in the course of the last nationalization actions on March 14, 1968 the authorities seized the imagery as a cultural and introduced into the previously mentioned archive. The majority of advertising and fashion photographs by Alberto, Luis and the later -added Genovevo Vasquez were lost and therefore a very important and so far poorly understood chapter of the Cuban photographic history.

Luis Korda worked after the closure of the studios Korda for the satirical weekly magazine Palante and for the weekly magazine Bohemia.