Enrique Meneses

Photographer, journalist and writer Enrique Meneses was one of the leading lights of twentieth-century Spanish documentary photography. Over the course of his 60-year career, he photographed everything from the Suez Crisis and the Cuban Revolution to American civil rights protests and Bosnian war. Most famously, Meneses was the first journalist to trek out to the mountains of Sierra Maestra and cover the activities of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro; these images-an incredible scoop for the young photographer, who risked his life to get them-include shots of the pair shaving together or reading books by lamplight, and are now a part of the photojournalistic canon. Among the many other highlights included in this substantial Meneses survey are his depictions of the Suez Crisis; anti-Cuban demonstrations in North America; public appearances by John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev; civil rights protests with Martin Luther King, Marlon Brando, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan; and portraits of Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Salvador Dali, Andres Segovia, Alfred Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren and other celebrities; and reproductions of magazine spreads and other archival materials.
Enrique Meneses (1929-2013) was born in Madrid and spent his childhood and early school years in Biarritz, Paris and Estoril. At the age of 17 he traveled to Linares to cover the death of the matador Manolete. In 1954 he moved to Cairo, where he lived and photographed for four years, documenting the Suez Crisis for Paris Match. In 1961 he co-founded the Delta Press agency, photographing extensively throughout the U.S. Meneses continued to travel throughout his life, forming numerous photographic agencies. His last major body of work was his documentation of the siege of Sarajevo, in 1993. Meneses died in January 2013.