Karsh Signature

Yousuf Karsh, master photographer of the 20th century

Jerry Lewis, 1926-2017

Muscular Dystrophy
Jerry Lewis, 1974

Jerry Lewis has died at home in Las Vegas at the age of 91. Yousuf Karsh photographed Lewis in 1974 for Lewis’s Muscular Dystrophy annual Labor Day telethon.

Karsh was introduced to the Muscular Dystrophy Association by his wife, Estrellita, who, as a medical writer, had written about the disease. Karsh would go on to photograph the annual poster for the Muscular Dystrophy Association for more than 20 years. In 1983, when that year’s poster child, Christopher Rush, went to the White House and presented his photograph to the President, Reagan looked at the picture and said, “Oh, you know, Mr. Karsh has photographed me, too.”

Yousuf Karsh with Robbie and Kerri Whitaker, the first children to pose for the Muscular Dystrophy Association Annual Poster, 1963

See all Sittings related to Yousuf Karsh’s work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Read the Jerry Lewis obituary in the New York Times.

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