Progress update

Data collection- So far I've collected images from all parts of the world. I've focussed primarily on photos taken of Che images found on billboards, government buildings, walls, posters, etc. I've also started a preliminary search in world newspapers. The images that accompany stories in newspapers in Latin America and on the BBC News website are not always the Korda image that has become so well known.

The photographs found depict Che in a variety of mediums. The photos found in Cuba are of a nationalistic nature. Many are of road signs or are large murals painted on walls. Most of the photos taken in Latin America are of murals and stencil paintings. Images of Che found in Europe range from small stencil paintings to posters to partials of the Korda image displayed outside of an art museum. Photos of Che have been difficult to find in Asian countries, but I did find one poster aligned with a beer ad in Korea.

Further Research - I need to continue my search for images across the world and begin to categorize what I find. So far the styles range, from large murals to stencil paintings and from posters to street art. Official government images can be found in Cuba and statues are can be found in Cuba and Bolivia. Further research needs to be done into images found in world newspapers. Aligning these images with the tone of the story could also provide insight into how the image is perceived or what it means t0 each country.

data collection thus far

Alright so here are my totals of Che data so far this quarter:

websites: 21

videos/movies: 5

pictures: 5

books: 4

districts visited: 2

graphs/tables: 2

Unfortunately I did not start keeping track of data I found and discarded until recently, so this is all data I thought worthy of sharing with the rest of the class.

Che Sign!

Yes... not in droves, but Che has been showing up. A few observations from the context have been interesting to me as well.

Basics first. People do still wear Che t-shirts, at least three of them anyway. Despite having spent a considerable amount of time downtown, in Freemont, and in the u-district all three Che tees I spotted were on campus. Two were light olive green-brown colored shirts with a solid black silhouette of the Korda image filling the front (no text). Just a few minutes ago I met a Korean student wearing a gray Che T shirt with a similar image, but a distinct red star and glow around it. There was some vertically aligned type on the left in a cursive font, but I didn't make out what it read. I had a chance to informally interview him and learned that he received the shirt as a gift from a host family while he was traveling in Nicaragua. He had a basic sense of who Che was and though he didn't idolize him recognized that he "fought against injustice" and felt his values overlapped.

I also had a chance to visit the shirt vendor on the Ave. He screen prints everything himself on various second hand clothing items. His collection includes not just Che images, but Bob Marley, a lion, an elephant, (I feel like I'm forgetting a couple), and--interestingly--V (from V for Vendetta). V especially interested me because I'd just recently seen the movie for the first time and the the ideology and symbolism fascinated me. As I've looked for Che images, V seems to be a minor re-incarnation.

Here's some background:
- Watching V for Vendetta and noticing humanist/anarchist ideological themes
- Following rabbit trails from thechestore.com I was on a "Pop culture tees" website and noticed an anarchist t-shirt
- Looking around for Che stencils but finding anarchist "A" carvings in wood fences and sidewalks instead

This led me to compare the V symbol and with the anarchist and humanist symbol, and some of the similarity was startling.

Here's the normal V symbol


Here's the Anarchist symbol (from the t-shirt)


- And here's all it takes to match them
Rotate V upside down:


Knock out V, and add a cross line for the A:


I looked for a similar comparison with Humanist symbols, but found that decisive connections were harder to find. Sometimes they are combined with the anarchist symbol though.

Interesting You Tube clip on Che

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xHirDOoRu8

Although the conservative bias in this interview on the Glen Beck show is apparent and sometimes irritating, it does present some ideas I have not considered yet. The author of the book on Che semiotics interviewed in the clip suggests that Fidel Castro has more to do with the popularization of the Che image than anyone. Interesting.

Distribution Search

www.theCHEstore.com

This is the first website I investigated, primarily because it is the top site that comes up when you type “Che merch” into a websearch. The primary slogan for this website is “for all your revolutionary needs.” I have emailed this site on April 23rd requesting them to answer a few simple questions about their business; specifically why they sell only Che merchandise. I got no response.

One important fact to know about this website is they claim that officially licensed Che Guevara merchandise is only produced through their business. To quote the site:
“All theCHEstore.com merchandise is available to qualified merchants at wholesale prices. If you are a distributor or retailer and are interested in an opportunity to resell licensed Che Guevara product, then contact theCHEstore.com.”

Additionally, if you own a website a post a link to the Che store they will pay you 10% of all sales generated by your link. This payment seems to be made primarily through PayPal. Once again, Che products are manufacture for this website only. What is most notable about this website is that they are paying money to be able to withhold their name. The only information available is that the site’s physical location is in Bellevue, Washington while the site’s domain is located in Canada (thank you to Daniel for showing me how to do this).

In terms of the actual merchandise itself, it ranges from t-shirts to clocks to lighters. I have provided a table with the number of each item I found and what color it was. The table can be found as the first page after this report. Over 90% of all the items you can buy on the site simply display the Korda image of Che. So a typical t-shirt would be black or red with Che’s head on it with no real text. I only found one t-shirt that deviated from this trend: it was black with the number 26 on the front of it and the slogan “Don’t forget the revolution” on the back. I have no idea what “26” has to do with Che and so I looked into it.

www.che-lives.com

This website claims to be a “leftist project” dedicated to the memory of Che Guevara. When you go to their merchandise store, it simply gives you a link to www.theCHEstore.com (giving some evidence that maybe all Che merch does go through that site). However, there are some Che items that are not sold through that site, but they are not clothes. For example, this site offers 38 posters for sale. When you click on one of the posters to purchase it, it takes you to www.allposters.com. The art and creativity behind these posters goes beyond what the Che store has to offer. While a lot of them are the typical Korda image on black or red, there quite a few posters that that are historical photographs blown up. One of these posters I recognized as the same one that I have in my room right now (I had bought it at a campus vendor at Washington State University last year). The majority of these posters, including my own, depict Che in a relaxed type of setting smoking a cigar and smiling. Now that I think of it, Che has only been depicted with two types of expressions in all of this merchandise: either the determined look in the Korda image, or him smiling in a casual manner. All of these posters are between 6-10$ except for a few art prints which are between 20-30$. This website offers the same 27 books as the Che store, through Amazon.com.

One thing I found interesting was that although the book I annotated, “Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message” implied that the image of Che in these posters have gotten to be more colorful and “peace” oriented since the 60’s and 70’s, only one of the posters on that website resembled this. The majority of the posters were black, black and white, or red with the typical Korda image.

Overall this website is much more purposeful than the CHE store. They are obviously not just out to sell t-shirts. On their site they have posted 8 links leading to websites talking about Che and his life (and consequently, his death). One such link of interest was called “The Death of Che Guevara,” which contains declassified US documents dealing with his execution.
However, after I typed this website name into the domain searcher I found that all the information regarding the website was blocked. The only piece of information that was available is that the site is located in Westchester, CA.

The Che Guevara Store at www.CafePress.com

And yet another piece of evidence that points to the possibility of theChestore.com having exclusive rights to official Che merch. Although you can buy t-shirts from this website that have a famous Che quote or his picture, there are no shirts sold with the Korda image on them. The quote says, “If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.” However, you can buy shirts from this site with just about every major socialist figure’s head on them! A few examples are Trotsky and Karl Marx. Surprisingly, these shirts are about the same price as a typical Che shirt you would find at the Che store (around 20$). The site gives you a choice of 20 or so types of t-shirts (plain cotton shirts that are white or black, etc) as well as a few backpacks and coffee mugs. You choose which type of clothing you want and they put the quote or picture on the shirt.

Ebay Searches

Ebay holds a much wider array of Che merchandise than even the Che store. However, most of the items I have observed still depict the tyical Korda image, even with items that were hand-crafted or not manufactured by the Che store. What is most notable about these items is that even the buyout prices on them seem to be about half of what you would have to pay for at the Che store. As a result I decided to take the average of all the t-shirt prices from Cafepress.com, the Che store, and the buyout prices on Ebay and compare them (this does not include shipping):


www.theCHEstore.com: $17.49
www.cafepress.com: $22.65*
www.ebay.com: $13.39

*Note that café press seems to be more expensive because instead of ordering a stock t-shirt, you pick the design and what type of clothing you want the image put on, so I am assuming they charge extra because of that, and because you can get the t-shirt custom fitted. For the purposes of this research the comparison between ebay (where individuals are selling their custom made shirts or reselling items they bought elsewhere) and the Che store might be more telling.

www.Zumiez.com and www.Hottopic.com

I searched through both of these websites because Zumiez used to sell Che t-shirts and hot topic is the kind of clothing store that could also sell them. However, after sifting through both of their catalogs I found not a single t-shirt with Che’s image. After contacting the Zumiez downtown and visiting Hot Topic in Capitol Hill, I was not able to obtain a useful explanation as to why neither store carries them anymore. The most plausible conclusion would be that Che shirts did not sell well enough in Zumiez stores to warrant keeping them in production.

Broad Image Search - Research and Analysis

Research description:
My goal in this phase of research to achieve a broad immersion of all the different types of Che images. I felt this was both necessary because of my lack of exposure, as well as additionally helpful because it allowed me to form my first impressions very consciously. There was very little that I presupposed about what information would be significant in the images. The purpose of the search was primarily to get oriented enough to even know what to focus on.

For my search, I chose two particularly broad databases: Google and Flickr. For each I searched straightforwardly for “Che Guevara.” As a matter of interest, I also browsed some results from the editorial library of Getty Images to contrast these results. In my Google Image search I examined 450 pictures (the first 25 pages of results) and noted the unique images as well as their context. Though I didn’t document it, I also internally noted the frequency with which other images repeated. As I saved pictures, I made an informal indication about how or where they were being used (“anitche_politicalblog.jpg” for example). Due to the individualized nature of it’s content, I felt that flickr would provide some insights that Google did not. I searched about 250 images in flickr.

Findings, trends:
- Initially, I was surprised by how many critical and satirical Che images I uncovered. After eliminating the most commonly repeated images (in particular the B&W reduction of the famous Korda photograph over a red background), these comprised about half of the unique results.
- Next I noticed where these and the other unique images were coming from. A disproportionate number came from political blogs (either to the extreme political right or left). They seemed to either demonize him or idolize him (respectively). The former tended to be t-shirts with the classic image and cynical text (“Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” etc). Other recurring sources seemed to be thumbnails from news clippings, fine art galleries, and merchandize stores. A significant number of merchandize results were for posters, books, or photographic print of his image.
- Moving on to search flickr, the results seemed more weighted. They still contained Che satire images and generic highly repeated images, but less proportionally. Instead, they contained a higher proportion of tributes revering Che and photographs of found objects/images recognizing Che (statues, graffiti, etc.)
- Within the flickr results, I noticed that (relative to normal flickr images or the Google Che images) they had lots of text accompanying them. Most of the time this was a biographical tribute to Che.
- Among the editorial results (both from Getty and Google), Che seemed most frequently depicted as a political figurehead (being waved on flags at a rally, etc.) or an extreme merchandize item (being worn by a model as a pattern on a bikini).

Points of interest:
- Large scale bust statue in Boliva
- Coin with head on Che face that reads “Patria O Meurte”
- Use of Che’s image by Cuban government on found objects (including large-scale sculptures, banners, and even his signature on the national currency)
- Modernized graffiti of Che “in our image”
- Personalizations of the Korda silhouette on black (including a self-portrait, depiction of Jesus, and Nintendo’s Mario)
- Jesus made to look like Che on billboard
- An editorial photograph of Che with John Lennon
- A Che Bikini
- A Che onesie
- A grayscale Che tattoo (left shoulder)
- Digital tribute art to Che
- The appearance of Che posters or stencil art in S. Korea, Ireland, and England (by artist Banksy)
- Victims of Che poster
- Photoshopped image of Che looking down Marilyn Monroe’s shirt
- Che’s face made to look like a monkey or replaced with a skull
- A photograph of a book page using different American brands to build the Che image (Disney, Chrysler, etc). Opposite is the same made out of spilled coffee.
- An arena of people used as “human pixels” to make the image of Che (unknown circumstances)

Deliverables:
The total of unique images selected from each source was 171. In addition to the naming, these images were organized by folder into several categories:
- “Anti-Che, Satire”
- “Editorial” (I included some for-sale photo prints here)
- “Merchandize” (I included for-sale posters and books here)
- “Political figurehead, Pro-Che” (I included some editorial images here)
- “Tribute” (This was based more on context. It included many categories)
- “Art” (I included Graffiti and Murals within this)
These images and folders were then packaged into a compressed “.zip” file and made accessible to the Che group via email, so we can use them to accelerate research and as a common reference point. Though not posted online, I synthesized this same group of images into an unorganized HTML photo gallery.

Possible direction for future research:
- Search Deviant Art, an online art community
- Extend Getty Images search
- Search Google and Flickr for “Che Merchandize”
- Research and graph trends in text accompanying Che images on Flickr
- Present a more detailed analysis of context where “Che Guevara” images are found on Google (with screenshots, trends, and other useful info)
- Research how Che is used as a Cuban identity (travel websites, government banners and built objects). Focus especially on the city of Santa Clara.

More Che in Cuba and Bolivia

I found a few more interesting photos of Che billboards and paintings in Cuba and Bolivia. Click the image to be taken to the original URL.

Here are the two from Cuba. One is a road sign and the other is of a stencil painting on the outside of a ration shop.

Here are a couple of stencil paintings on the outside of buildings in Bolivia.
According to the photographer, the last image from Bolivia was taken in La Higuera. This is the town Che was imprisoned in for a day before being executed.

Notes on data collection:
All images were found on Flickr. For the images from Cuba, I logged onto Flickr, selected the Groups drop-down menu and chose Search for a Group. The search keywords used were "Che Guevara Cuba". The search resulted in several groups, but I chose the Che Guevara group and the Ernesto group. These were picked because they yielded good examples in the past and they contain the most photos. To find the photos from Bolivia, I did a search across everyone's uploads. Next to the Search box in the upper right-hand corner, I clicked the drop-down menu and chose Everyone's Uploads. In the new search box, I typed "Che Guevara Bolivia." This time I was specifically looking for murals or paintings on buildings in Bolivia.