Educational Media Reviews Online

El Día Que Me Quieras is a powerful video which explores issues surrounding the famous photo of Che Guevara's corpse taken by Freddy Alborta in Bolivia in 1976.

Consisting largely of interview footage with Alborta and images of the famous photo itself (and supplemented by other photos and motion picture clips produced at the same time), Leandro Katz deconstructs both the photo and its meaning in dramatic fashion. Katz blocks off various compositional elements of the photo to highlight and reveal not only the body of the slain Guevara, laid out on display with eyes wide open and likened to the body of Christ, but the spectators in the room and the room itself, providing a sort of photohistoric context for exploring the death of a leader and its impact for people around the world.

Katz probes the emotional terrain of a photographer's personal reaction to the haunting, open-eyed corpse of an infamous man who had become a hero and martyr to many. Photographer Alborta's dialogue is insightful as it crosses between two perspectives that are not always mutually exclusive: that of a detached professional who documents the news for a living, concerned with lighting, composition, and the perfect shot; and that of an individual, overwhelmed with the emotion of discovering Che has been executed and seeing his body on prominent display in a wash basin in a military laundry room. As Katz deftly moves from image to image in the photo, Alborta's narrative provides insight into the photographic enterprise, an eyewitness account of the day, and an individual's reflection on the meaning of a man's life, death, and impact on the world. El Día Que Me Quieras attempts to provide two rather noteworthy discussions: 1) an exploration of the photo, the world's reception of it, and reaction to it (both artistically and as a documentary source); and 2) an examination of the impact of Che Guevara's life and acts, and how they were transformed or mythologized by his death. The video quite successfully presents the first discussion, with interesting comparisons made between the photo and the work of Rembrandt and Mantegna. The second discussion, however, is less compelling, and proves to be not so much about the man or his legacy but instead about the lasting role that a visual image can have in defining these things in our memories.

This video would be useful and appropriate for photography, journalism, and visual media courses. It could also be used in history and Latin American studies courses; however, it would be of limited interest due to the focus on the photograph and photographic process as well as the lack of social and historic detail for contextualizing Che's role in Latin American history.

Recommended.