UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography
Curated by Douglas McCulloh
Lies are ever-present in human affairs, a tidal flow that rises and falls. Recently, lies have been at flood stage and photographs are central to the surge.
Statements, strings of words, are readily seen as assertions, claims. Photographs, on the other hand, are presumed to be a form of evidence. In Susan Sontag’s phrase, we assume photographs are “directly stenciled off the real.” Consequently, photographs, even dubious ones, carry credence in a way that words do not. Moreover, writes theorist Lev Manovich, “the reason we think that computer graphics technology has succeeded in faking reality is that we, over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, have come to accept the image of photography and film as reality.” For these main reasons and scores of lesser ones, photographs are ideal vehicles for lies. (Read More)
The Claim
A Cuban farmer refused to work under the Castro government. Revolutionary icon Che Guevara presided over four-minute (or two-minute, or one-minute) trial after which the farmer was stood against a wall and shot by a firing squad. The photograph was awarded the 1960 Pulitzer Prize in photography. “You will never see this picture on a T shirt.” “Wake up America! This is how socialism treat[s] land owners and business owners.”
The Lie
The photograph was made in January 17, 1959 by Andrew Lopez of United Press International, in the first weeks after the Cuban revolution. It did win the 1960 Pulitzer Prize in photography, one of a sequence of four made in Matanzas, Cuba. However, the man receiving last rites before his execution is not a farmer. He is Jose “Pepe Caliente” Rodriguez, a corporal in the repressive regime of Fulgencio Batista, just overthrown. According to UPI’s account at the time, a two-hour tribunal in San Severino fortress in Matanzas convicted Rodriguez in the murder of two brothers. Che Guevara is not mentioned. Rodriguez was then taken to the courtyard below. “When I saw him marching down the stairs,” said the photographer, “I went in front of him and into this huge, open air, dungeon-like area. I started to make pictures. When Pepe Caliente fell to his knees as a priest held up a cross for him to kiss, the scene was one that will be hard to forget. I honestly felt like crying … While all this was going on, the firing squad in the background impatiently was waiting for this scene to end so they could perform their duty.”
