2023-06-14 22:10:46
“Guabino, with this you fill yourself with glory or m…”, the then head of the photography department of the Granma newspaper, Emilio Argüelles, told the young man. who alternated daytime work in the newspaper’s photo lab, with university studies at night and fatherhood of two-year-old twin girls.
The mission: to take photos of the act for the 35th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, in Santiago de Cuba, in which the Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro Ruz, would participate.
A month earlier, the task entrusted to her by Susana Lee, the media’s head of information, had been another: to spend the entire month of December in the Hero City and climb Turquino Peak on the last day of the year, to wait there for the January 1.
Ismael Francisco recounts that when La China requested a name, Argüelles looked at everyone with his “Garciamarquean” face. A certain silence reigned among the veterans of the lens, who lowered their gaze.
In other times, the proposal to go to that land in eastern Cuba would have been disputed, but in 1993, it really did not arouse many illusions. Added to the weight of age was the idea that if Havana at that time was going through, according to some, the most difficult stage of the Special Period, in terms of blackouts, transportation and food, how would the other provinces be?
The wise head of the department agreed with Susana that later he would tell her the name of the gentleman. And logically, in a group of fifty-year-olds, that heroic task fell to the only twenty-something: Ismaelito.
November reached its autumn and December also dropped its first 20 leaves, when the boss knocked on Photography’s door again, resuming the task of the Hero City, but, luckily, with different objectives. There would no longer be a month-long stay, nor escalation; now the mission was to take the photos of the act of January 1, which the Commander in Chief would attend.
On that occasion, some showed willingness to go. Emilio, anticipating the possible interest of management in sending a particular photographer, colluded with La China, who told him that if he trusted his previous proposal, there would be no problem for them.
Then he definitively stated that Ismaelito would go, whom he affectionately called Guabino. That was when he told her the wise phrase, because that it would be his photographic baptism: Fidel on the spot. Second time that he was accredited by the Granma newspaper. His first national act as a photographer. A practically new image transmission technique for him: the radiophoto.
What December 31!
No partying or parties. In 1993 that was a utopia. What Ismaelito had to do was turn some part of the Party hotel room into a photography lab.
Inside bathroom: enlarger, buckets, chemicals, roll developer, paper developer, fixer, dryer, tweezers, safety lamps… The toilet was enabled to reveal photos and disabled for its regular use.
Then he helped his partner, Aldo Medero, in charge of transmitting the images using that World War II technique, to assemble the equipment and the fixed telephone line, which an ETECSA technician brought them on a bicycle.
At night, after eating the rice with picadillo, the photographer went to study the conditions of the place of the act. Fidel would speak from the balcony of the Town Hall, they would be behind the park benches, the square was dimly lit. In short, the occasion would merit invention.
Tricks of an iconic photo
With a digital camera, under those same conditions, the Granma envoy would not have had to commit fraud, but with a Nikon F3 – on loan, by the way – and a 70-200 F4 lens, he had no alternative.
“The cameras were fine, but the lenses were not suitable for working at night. The available film was 400 ISO, so I had to force it, chemically, that is, bring it to 1600 ISO, to increase the sensitivity.
“It was not the same to shoot with an original film of so much asage, than that invention, which would affect the quality of the photo, with an effect of more grain (what today is called digital noise). But, if it didn’t, the image would come out very dark. On the other hand, you had the option of slowing down, but the image might come out jerky. So I went for the chemistry trick.”
The value of an instant
He had the measured light, in his mind, possible framings, but the moment of taking the photo was decided by the heart.
“I did things without fear. I don’t remember being nervous. On the contrary, I think I was patient and that’s why the photo was achieved, because I waited, without removing the camera from my face, for that frame that was produced at the end.
“Fidel raised the replica of General Antonio Maceo’s machete. He spent several seconds with his weapon facing us. But what was seen was a thread, not a machete. Until he did a half turn the other way. That was the moment!” recalls our photojournalist.
What Fidel thought when he raised the machete
His face shines with courage, firmness, and solemnity before what he considered sacred: the people, the country, and the heroes..
But Fidel’s reflection of that moment was not known until he was later interviewed by journalists, since the replica of the machete was given to him at the end of the act. That was the closure. According to Ismael Francisco, “a very solemn moment.”
The Commander-in-Chief stated that at that moment he also wanted to have a horse and the enemy in front to force the people present there, to a mambisa charge, as he did so many times. the Bronze Titan, one of the most worthy sons of this country.
Because one charge would leave with the conviction of dying or winning, it was a moment, but the war of attrition that the people of Cuba were experiencing was much more difficult.
echoes of an image
At three in the morning, Guabino went to his makeshift laboratory without the certainty that he had captured that photographic painting for history. Until he revealed the scrolls. The photo was!
In a few hours, the iconic image reached the newspaper’s newsroom in Havana, via radiophoto.
The photo of Fidel raising the replica of the Bronze Titan’s machete was featured on the cover of the January 4, 1994 edition, and years later, reproduced in the first edition of the XXI Century, which Granma made up of his most far-reaching writings and images. of the century
When Ismel Francisco returned to the capital, one of those days when together the photography apprentice and the head of the department walked to the bus stop, Emilio Argüelles commented to Ismaelito: “Someone told me that I wanted to sink you by sending you to Santiago. But I had full confidence that you would do a good job, like them”.
The image of the Commander with the replica of Maceo’s machete reproduced in the Baraguá swimming pool complex in Havana. Photo: Ismael Francisco/ Cubadebate.
An image so full of symbolism has left its author very satisfied, both professionally and personally. But eThe most special memory: Argüelles’s humility and confidence towards him. “That courage to say: I am not in any way afraid that, due to his youth and little experience, he cannot do it well.”
Just as pleasant was the surprise that the seasoned Granma photographers gave Ismaelito for his 27th birthday on May 20, 1995. They presented him with a photo of Fidel raising the replica of Maceo’s machete, with his signatures and those of other comrades. It was the way of telling him that that had been his baptism as a photographer, with glory and not with m…
Taken from Cubadebate
#titanic #photo #Fidel #Maceo