No title (Che smoking), 1963

Osvaldo Salas is widely recognized as one of the world’s great press photographers, was born in Havana, Cuba in 1914. At the age of fourteen, he left Havana for New York. After several odd jobs at Madison Square Garden, Salas began taking pictures for an international boxing association that had the major champions of the time under contract. By the end of the war, Salas had fallen in love with photography and he won his first award in 1947. As a publicity photographer, his work was published in Life magazine as well as The New York Times. When Fidel Castro visited the US in 1955 to raise funds for the revolution, Salas was assigned to photograph him in New York City. After several visits to Salas’ studio, Castro invited him and his son Roberto to Havana. They both became Fidel’s semi-official photographers. His stylistic images expertly communicate Cuba’s evolving cultural, social and political realities.