Korda, Alberto (Cuban, 1928-2001) Photograph. “El Juego De Golf 1960.” Cybachrome on paper photograph. Signed lower right Alberto Korda. The photograph depicts Fidel Castro and Che Guevara playing golf together. In good condition. Vacuum mounted onto foam-core. Image size 13 ” x 15 7/8”. Measures 18” x 20”. Unframed.

From Theguardian.com: The Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, who has died of a heart attack aged 72 while visiting Paris for an exhibition of his work, will be best remembered for his portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara - one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, and one of the few that truly deserve to be called iconic. Born in Havana, the son of a railway worker, the young Alberto had a variety of jobs before he started working as a photographer's assistant. He was a runner for a betting shop and a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman. He took up photography with frankly macho motives: "My main aim was to meet women," he once confessed. "I wanted to be near beautiful women." He succeeded by marrying Cuba's most beautiful model of the day, Niurka, though his three marriages ended in divorce. Naturally charming and ebullient, the diminutive and wiry Alberto soon established himself as a successful fashion photographer, changing his surname from Daz Gutirrez to that of the British filmmaker Alexander Korda because it sounded like "Kodak" to his Cuban ear. He soon had his own studio in Havana, and an expensive playboy lifestyle. Like so many of his compatriots, his life was transformed by the Cuban revolution of 1959. On an assignment in the countryside soon after the guerrillas defeated the dictator Batista, he encountered such poverty that he was converted to the revolutionary cause. He began to follow the new Cuban leaders around, offering his photos to the newspaper Revolucin, whose offices were close to his studios. He spent 10 years as Fidel Castro's official photographer, using his skills to humanise the revolutionary leader's image in off-duty scenes - sharing moments with Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre, or confronting a caged tiger at the New York Zoo. It was while on an assignment for Revolucin in 1960 that Korda took the famous photo of Che, at a protest rally after a Belgian freighter carrying arms to Cuba was blown up by counter-revolutionaries while being unloaded in Havana harbour, killing more than 100 dock workers. As he later recalled, it was a damp, cold day. Using a 90mm lens, he was panning his Leica across the figures on the dais when Che's face jumped into the viewfinder. The look in Che's eyes startled Korda so much that he instinctively lurched backwards, and immediately pressed the button: "There appears to be a mystery in those eyes, but in reality it is just blind rage at the deaths of the day before, and the grief for their families." Ironically, Korda's picture was relegated to an inside page of Revolucin, giving pride of place to Fidel. The original remained on the wall of his studio until 1967, when he gave two 10" x 8" prints of it as a gift to the left wing Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (the man who first published Dr Zhivago in the West, and who was blown up by a car-bomb in 1972). A few weeks later, Che was captured and killed in Bolivia - and became an instant martyr. When Castro addressed a memorial rally in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucin, Korda's photo was used as a mural on the building facing the podium; it is still there. Feltrinelli instantly spotted the value of the image, using one print for the cover of Che's diaries, and giving the other to the makers of the posters which were soon being carried through the streets of Europe in the protest marches of 1968. This image of Che, noble and defiant, with tilted beret and flowing locks, rapidly spread to T-shirts and album covers, and was soon taken up by advertisers targeting youth, until it rivalled the Mona Lisa as perhaps the most replicated image ever. But Korda received no royalties; Feltrinelli had used the photo without permission, and even failed to credit him as the photographer. In any case, Korda had no remedy until Cuba rejoined the international copyright convention in 1997. Finally, angered when the image appeared in a Smirnoff advert in Britain - Che never drank - he asked the Cuba Solidarity Campaign to help him sue Smirnoff's advertising agency, Lowe Lintas, and the picture library, Rex Features, for infringement. By happy coincidence, he received the news of an out-of-court settlement on his birthday last year, during a visit to London for the Cuba, Si! exhibition of Cuban photography at the National Theatre. He immediately handed over an undisclosed sum to buy much-needed medicine for Cuban children. A lifelong smoker and rum drinker, Korda told marvellous anecdotes of the ascetic revolutionaries. "Once, I had to take pictures of Che cutting cane with the workers," he said. "He made me work for a week cutting cane before he'd let me take a shot. He was hard that way." From 1968-78, Korda concentrated on underwater photography, until a Japanese exhibition in 1978 stimulated international interest in his work. From the early 1980s, he lived in modest semi-retirement, though he accompanied Castro on a recent visit to Venezuela and Mexico. In 1999, he appeared in the pre-title sequence of Wim Wenders's documentary, Buena Vista Social Club, rifling through photos from the heroic early days - here is Che, for example, playing golf with Castro ("Who won?" "Fidel, because Che let him") - which ends with an image of a demonstration outside the US embassy that Korda called "David and Goliath". For some reason, Wenders fails to credit him. Speaking in Havana late last year, Korda, who leaves two sons and two daughters, said: "Life may not have granted me a great fortune in money, but it has given me the even greater fortune of becoming a figure in the history of photography." The Cuba Si! exhibition, which includes some of Korda's work, is at the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, until June 16, and at Wingfield Arts, Eye, Suffolk, from July 7 until September 30.

• Alberto Daz Gutirrez (Korda), photographer, born September 17 1928; died May 25 2001