NEW BIO TURNS THE LENS ON KARSH’S LIFE AND CAREER
CTV.ca News Staff
CTV.ca
s/story/CTVNews/20071128/karsh_book_071128/2007112 8?hub=Entertainment
Nov 28 2007
Canada
Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh — most famous for his iconic
portrait of Winston Churchill — is the subject of a new authorized
biography that recounts how he managed to capture the British prime
minister’s glowering expression.
"Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh," by Dr. Maria
Tippett, tells the full story of how the Armenian immigrant came to
Canada in the 1920, eventually becoming the most prominent portrait
photographer of the twentieth century.
Karsh, who died in 2002, immortalized generations of world leaders,
royalty, actors, scientists and authors through his camera lens.
Tippett’s book is illustrated throughout with pictures of Queen
Elizabeth II, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Humphrey Bogart,
Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Ernest Hemingway, Pope Pius XII,
Nikita Khrushchev, John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy, Pablo Picasso and
Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
But it was how Karsh captured the iconic photo of British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill that made him the stuff of legend.
On Dec. 30, 1941, Churchill visited Canada to speak to Parliament
and had agreed to sit for a portrait with Karsh.
But Churchill, in a grumpy mood, only gave him two minutes and wanted
to keep his cigar in his mouth.
"Karsh said I don’t want to take another one of those damn cigar
portraits," Tippett told CTV’s Canada AM.
"When Churchill wouldn’t take the cigar out of his mouth, Karsh did it
for him and he (Churchill) scowled at him and there was that wonderful
image to match the rhetoric of Churchill himself."
Karsh also photographed Bill and Hillary Clinton but was never happy
with the result.
"At the beginning of that shoot, which was done in the Oval Office,
Clinton came in and was rather gruff with Karsh… and this put him
off," said Tippett.
"Of course the irony is (that) in the Oval Office itself, Clinton
has Churchill’s portrait hanging there (that Karsh took)."
Karsh was born in Mardin, a city in the Ottoman Empire on Dec. 23,
1908, but left to escape the Armenian genocide. He came to Canada in
1924 to live with his uncle, a photographer, in Sherbrooke, Que.
Karsh wanted to be a doctor but couldn’t afford medical school, so
after a brief apprenticeship his uncle sent him to Boston to study
photography under the portraitist John H. Garo.
It was in Boston’s museums and galleries that Karsh refined his eye
for light and shadow.
He launched his Ottawa studio in 1932, but didn’t install himself
into his famed digs at the Chateau Laurier until 1972.
"If he photographed you he’d know everything about you in advance,
he’d have research done on you," said Tippett.
"He would do so with a mixture of flattery and being a bully and
that way he could catch you slightly off-guard and this is why he
got beneath the veneer of these very, very well-known figures."
The Karsh Photographic Studio closed in 1992 and in 1997 Karsh left
Ottawa, along with wife Estrellita, a medical researcher, for Boston.
He was the recipient of 17 honorary degrees and the only Canadian
named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by
the International Who’s Who
Karsh died in Boston in 2002 at the age of 93.