Korda: Beauty and Revolution is the result of this now enhanced investigation, during which we asked ourselves over and over again: what was the Havana studio where he shot his fashion and publicity photos between 1954 and 1968 really like? What was the leader of the Revolution whose image he captured in private and never printed or revealed like? Where were the ‘people’ who supported the Revolution and who were rarely included in his selection of images for books and exhibitions? Were there other models besides Norka? Where did he find them when fashion and publicity came to an end in socialist Cuba almost from the beginning of the 1960s? Was the sea a recurring theme in his work, or was it the refuge he found following the confiscation of his studio in 1968 and the termination of his role as designated photographer to the leader of the Cuban Revolution? And what do his images tell us today, when the historical leaders of the era are disappearing and the utopic society they envisaged is being diluted?

This exhibition explores this history,  attempting to answer these questions and to unearth in each new site unpublished photographs and materials from the era which, when viewed with a contemporary gaze, demonstrate that Alberto Korda was inspired by the best photography of his time, that he was influenced by the peculiarity of his cultural context and that he embraced the historical period in which he happened to live with an intense ethical and aesthetic vision. The exhibition shows an extremely versatile artist, not simply the ‘illustrator’ of a particular political history, no matter how interesting or newsworthy this period was. His works extend from commercial advertise (in which he was a pioneer in Cuba) to politics; from depicting celebrities to portraying the leader; from the city’s nightlife to military marches or popular rallies; from the sensuality of female nudes to the scientific observation of Cuba’s seas. And he did all of this without dismissing either genres or subjects, moving naturally and authentically between glamour, beauty and Revolution.