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That is how I think of Yousuf Karsh, Canadian portraitist. The 7th anniversary of his death passed recently, on July 13th -- very quietly, without much fanfare or notice. I like to think Karsh would have liked it that way. He was a quiet man who seemed to prefer to let his work speak for him; and although he was a regular self-portraitist, he never seemed to reveal anything about himself in them. He seems more like a place-holder for another subject, as though his pictures of himself were useful only as exercises in lighting and shade, focus and texture, never as a vehicle for self-expression.
More below the fold....
"...when the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh of Ottawa."
-- George Perry, The Sunday Times
Yousuf (born Hovsep) Karsh was a war child. Born in 1908, he grew up in and was shaped by the Armenian genocide. At 14 he fled with his family to Syria; two years later, he was living in what must have been the inutterably alien world of Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, attending school and assisting his uncle, George Nakash, in his photography studio. Uncle George spotted great potential in young Yousuf, and packed him off at the age of twenty to Boston for an apprenticeship with portrait photographer John Garo. In 1932 Karsh returned to Canada, moved to Ottawa and set up a studio in the Chateau Laurier Hotel. He began with portraits of his fellow Ottawanians; graduate nurses, babies and toddlers, bridal mementos and portraits to be sent to grandparents in the Old Country (whichever Old Country that may be). His work caught the attention of Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who began arranging for Karsh to photograph foreign dignitaries and potentates upon the occasion of their respective visits to Our Nation's Capital. And in 1941, Karsh met Churchill.
"In 1941, Churchill visited first Washington and then Ottawa. The Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, invited me to be present and to observe Churchill's expressions, moods, and attitudes while he addressed the Canadian Parliament. After the electrifying speech, I waited in the Speaker's Chamber where, the evening before, I had set up my lights and camera. The Prime Minister, arm-in-arm with Churchill and followed by his entourage, started to lead him into the room. I switched on my floodlights; a surprised Churchill growled, "What's this, what's this?" No one had the courage to explain. I timorously stepped forward and said, "Sir, I hope I will be fortunate enough to make a portrait worthy of this historic occasion." He glanced at me and demanded, "Why was I not told?" When his entourage began to laugh, this hardly helped matters for me. Churchill lit a fresh cigar, puffed at it with a mischievous air, and then magnanimously relented. "You may take one." But to get the giant to walk grudgingly from his corner to where my lights and camera were set up some little distance away was a feat! Churchill's cigar was ever present. I held out an ashtray, but he would not dispose of it. I went back to my camera and made sure that everything was all right technically. I waited; he continued to chomp vigorously at his cigar. I waited. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, "Forgive me, sir," and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph. The silence was deafening. Then, Mr. Churchill, smiling benignly, said, "You may take another one." He walked toward me, shook my hand, and said, "You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed."
From then on, if there was an official portrait to be taken, if there was a hero to be epigraphed, if there was an immortal to be immortalized, odds are, Karsh was there. He photographed queens and starlets, statesmen and sportsmen, intellectuals and insurrectionists. Of the 100 most notable people of the century, named by the International Who’s Who [2000], Karsh had photographed 51, from Muhammad Ali to Frank Lloyd Wright, Laurence Olivier to Grey Owl, Fidel Castro to Pope Pius XII.
"Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the photographer must act or lose his prize." -- Yousuf Karsh, Karsh Portfolio, 1967
Please enjoy.
- Audrey Hepburn
- Muhammad Ali
- Albert Einstein
- Ernest Hemingway
- Jacqueline Kennedy
- George Bernard Shaw
- Helen Keller and Polly Thompson
- Peter Lorre
- Queen (then Princess) Elizabeth II
- Nikita Krushchev
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Glenn Gould
- Norman Rockwell
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- Yousuf Karsh