Radical Portrayals: Dickey Chapelle on the Front Lines

American photojournalist Dickey Chapelle’s work exemplifies the turn away from the standard of objectivity at midcentury to one of the “reporter engagée.” This study examines Chapelle’s coverage of the Cuban Revolution in 1958–1959 and argues that Chapelle’s work prefigured the more engaged photography of the 1960s, serving as a bridge in photographic practice between that period and the style prevalent in the 1930s. The study, grounded in an examination of Chapelle’s archives at the Wisconsin Historical Society, including her diaries, letters, and photographs, is a narrative analysis of published articles in Reader’s Digest describing her sojourn with Castro in the Oriente Province and the march into Havana. The study also contrasts Chapelle’s work in Cuba to her work in Algeria, where she took a positive partisan stance toward that insurgent movement and provided a unique perspective in American news magazines of the period.