Yousuf Karsh, master photographer of the 20th century
Claudio Arrau was a Chilean pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms. Born in 1903, Arrau is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. He died on this day, June 9, in 1991.
Some glamor to get us through Hump Day. Mary Martin (1913-1990) was an American actress and singer. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles on stage over her career, including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific (1949), the title character in Peter Pan (1954), and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1959). She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was the mother of actor Larry Hagman.
See another portrait of Mary Martin.
Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung died on this day, June 6, in 1961 (b. 1875). He created some of the best known psychological concepts, including synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious, the psychological complex and extraversion and introversion. Jung was also an artist, craftsman, builder and a prolific writer. He continued to publish books until the end of his life, including Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies in 1959, the year after he was photographed by Karsh. The book analyzed the archetypal meaning and possible psychological significance of the reported observations of UFOs. Read more (Wikipedia).
Queen Elizabeth II has been featured in currency ever since she was a little girl. This Canadian $1 featuring a Karsh portrait from 1951 was first issued in 1954. The tiara was removed from the photograph to distinguish it from a Canadian stamp that used the same photo. The original image, with the tiara, was also used in the window of a Canadian banknote issued 61 years later in 2015.
Read all about Her Majesty’s history with currency in the Sydney Morning Herald.
On June 3, 1937, former King Edward VIII married Wallis Simpson. Having ruled for less than one year, Edward became the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne as he wished to marry a divorcée. Their marriage followed his abdication in December 1936, when the new King George VI announced he was to make his brother the “Duke of Windsor” with the style of Royal Highness.
The couple lived mainly in exile in Paris, France.
Celebrations for Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee begin today. We now have more than a dozen photographs of Her Majesty on the website, more than any other Karsh subject. Click here to see them.
“Countless Journeys” is a podcast from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21; Season 3, which has just launched, celebrates the contributions of Canadian immigrants to the performing and visual arts. They begin with “a celebration of the life and work of legendary photographer Yousuf Karsh.”
“Karsh’s life story, from refugee to world-class photographer, unfolds, along with more than 100 of his portraits, in a wonderful exhibit featured at the Canadian Museum of Immigration, “The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence.” We speak with Dr. Hilliard Goldfarb, who is senior curator emeritus with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the lead curator of the exhibit.” Listen here.
This episode, “Visionaries Past & Present,” also includes Dinuk Wijeratne, a Juno award winning composer and performer whose music blurs boundaries and shakes up traditional approaches to classical music.
The United States first proposed an anti-ballistic missile treaty at the 1967 Glassboro Summit Conference during discussions between U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union Alexei Kosygin.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed on this day, May 26, in 1972, by the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev.
British politician Harold Wilson died on this day, May 24, in 1995. Born in 1916, Wilson was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1983, and served as Prime Minister twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. Wilson was the Leader of the Labour Party from 1963 to 1976.
Karsh photographed Wilson on three occasions, 1949, 1958, and 1963.
Born in 1925, trailblazing American broadcast journalist Barbara Walters was a working reporter from 1951 until 2015, appearing as a host of numerous television programs, including Today, The View, 20/20, and the ABC Evening News. May 16, 2014, was Walters’ last day as a co-host on the all-women talk show The View that she created in 1997. She then hosted a few special 20/20 episodes, with her final on-air appearance in December, 2015.
French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor Georges Braque was born on this day, May 13, in 1882 (d. 1963).
His most notable contributions were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque’s work between 1908 and 1912 is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso.
This is a first! A whole double decker bus on the streets of Halifax, Nova Scotia, advertising the “World of Yousuf Karsh” exhibition, which is on now through October 16, 2022, at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.
“Karsh captured revealing and defining images of the world’s most influential figures, among them Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Helen Keller and Muhammad Ali, along with iconic Canadians Karen Kain, Marshall McLuhan, and famed African Nova Scotian concert singer Portia White. The portraits are mostly large format images and many are rare prints which Karsh himself developed.” Go see or tell a Nova Scotian friend.
American actress Joan Crawford died on this day, May 10, in 1977. Born Lucille Fay LeSueur sometime between 1904 and 1908, she starred in dozens of films, and was nominated for, and won, multiple awards.
Crawford was photographed in 1948, the same month as other Hollywood stars Clark Gable, Margaret O’Brien, and the Marx Brothers.
Vincent Auriol (1884-1966) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1947 to 1954. Karsh some prolific months in 1949 photographing people in the UK and Europe, including French writer Francois Mauriac; German composer Richard Strauss; British sculptor Henry Moore, and Pope Pius XII.
Another superb portrait is hereby added to the website.
Josip Broz, commonly known as Tito, was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary politician serving in various positions from 1943 until his death on May 4, in 1980 (b. 1892). During World War II, he was the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe. He also served as the president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 14 January 1953 until his death.
See another Karsh portrait of Tito, and one with his wife Jovanka Broz.
Another new addition to the website. The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, exhibition, and festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The event’s roots are traced to 1886, and in 1953 Karsh photographed “Stampede Week” for Macleans.
The caption for this photograph reads: “Karsh Visits Calgary In Stampede Week: Gordon Earl, twenty-seven year old rancher from British Columbia, was Canadian champion in the 1953 Calgary Stampede. He has been riding since he was four years old.”
John “Jack” Bush (1909-1977) was a Canadian abstract painter. A member of “Painters Eleven,” a group of Canadian abstract artists, his paintings are associated with the Color Field movement and post-painterly abstraction. Bush was inspired by American abstract expressionist painters such as Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011),who was photographed by Karsh in 1990.
Karsh’s portraits of both of these sitters have now been added to this ever-growing website.
The conductor Zubin Mehta was born on this day, April 29, in 1936. He is an Indian conductor of Western and Eastern classical music, and is music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
In 1978, Mehta left the Los Angeles Philharmonic to become music director for the New York Philharmonic. Among the reasons he wanted to direct the NYP was that it allowed him to experiment with new ideas, such as taking the orchestra to Harlem. There, they played at the Abyssinian Baptist Church each year. Accompanying the orchestra with Mehta for various concerts were Isaac Stern, and Itzhak Perlman.
More press for the exhibition “The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence” which is showing now through October 16, 2022, at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In her review for Saltwire, Helen Earley writes: “If I asked you to close your eyes and imagine Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, or Mother Theresa, what would you see? Chances are, without realizing it, your mind’s eye would conjure some recollection of a famous portrait taken by Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002), a teenager who arrived at the port of Halifax in 1924 as an Armenian refugee and lived to become one of the world’s most famous portrait photographers.
The “Mona Lisa” of the collection, White’s portrait is smaller than you expect. Bathed in dramatic “low-key” lighting of which Karsh was a master, the famous contralto leans back slightly, her long eyelashes casting shadows across flawless cheeks, her eyes and lips closed, as if in the middle of a deep inhale. As you stand back, you can experience White’s “essence”, captured through the exchange of energy between photographer and subject, recorded through the science of light, paper, and chemicals, and finally, transferred to you, the viewer. It is an intensely intimate experience.” Read the whole article.
Edward R. Murrow was born on this day, April 25, in 1908 (d. 1965). He was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe for the news division of CBS. A pioneer of radio and television news broadcasting, Murrow produced a series of reports on his television program See It Now which helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. among other distinctions Murrow was repeatedly honored with the Peabody Award, jointly and individually, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Read more (Wikipedia)
See another Karsh portrait of Edward R. Murrow.
Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. We are honoring Earth Day with the futurist Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and philosopher. Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, such as solar- and wind-derived electricity.
Fuller developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome; carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres. He also served as the second World President of Mensa International from 1974 to 1983. Read more (Wikipedia).
See another, newly uploaded, portrait of Buckminster Fuller.
Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her 96th birthday today. Born in 1926, Karsh first photographed her as Princess in 1943, and again in 1951; those 1951 portraits show the young Princess happy and relaxed, only six months before the death of her father, King George VI, when she suddenly became the future Queen of England. Karsh would go on to make official portraits of the royal family three more times: in 1966, 1984, and 1987.
George Ball (1909-1994) was an American diplomat and banker. He was the Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs for the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1966, and is remembered most as the only major dissenter against the escalation of the Vietnam War.
His portrait is freshly added to the website.
It’s Jackie Robinson Day in the United States on April 15th. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on this day in 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, they heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s.
In 1997, Major League Baseball retired Robinson’s uniform number 42 across all major league teams; he was the first professional athlete in any sport to be so honored. MLB adopted Jackie Robinson Day for the first time on April 15, 2004, on which every player on every team wears No. 42. Read more (Wikipedia).
The conservationist known as Grey Owl was born Archibald Belaney in England in 1888 and died on this day, April 13, in 1938, two years after he was photographed by Karsh.
In 1925, Belaney began calling himself “Grey Owl”, and telling people he was Native American.
Karsh wrote: “Not until John Buchan (then Lord Tweedsmuir and Governor General) came to the studio for a sitting and noticed my portrait of Grey Owl, did I learn that (he) was, in fact, an Englishman named Archibald Belaney. Still, he looked his chosen part and played it superbly… His false identity cannot, however, diminish his achievements as one of Canada’s earliest conservationists. His writings, speeches, and travels demonstrated a love of nature, the wilderness, and its animals, especially the beavers, those old symbols of our nation. He did much to convince the nation that they must be protected from man’s greed and folly. In that sense he was not an impostor but, I like to think, a prophet.”
We lost Pablo Picasso on this day, April 8, in 1973. Born in 1881, he is widely considered to be one of the greatest figures in 20th century art.
Karsh’s story of photographing Picasso is a particularly colorful one:
The maestro’s villa was a photographer’s nightmare, with his boisterous children bicycling through vast rooms already crowded with canvases. I eagerly accepted Picasso’s alternate suggestion to meet later in Vallauris at his ceramic gallery. ‘He will never be here,’ the gallery owner commented, when my assistant and two hundred pounds of equipment arrived. ‘He says the same thing to every photographer.’ To everyone’s amazement, the ‘old lion’ not only kept his photographic appointment with me but was prompt and wore a new shirt. He could partially view himself in my large format lens and intuitively moved to complete the composition.
Helen Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. Born in 1880, she was struck by illness at the age of 19 months and lost both her sight and hearing. At the age of seven she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan, who taught her language, including reading and writing; and on this day, April 5, in 1887, “Anne made the “miracle” breakthrough, teaching Helen that “everything had a name,” by spelling W-A-T-E-R into Helen’s hand as water from the family’s water pump flows over their hands.” Keller became a prolific author, writing 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to Mahatma Gandhi. Read more (Wikipedia).
When Sullivan’s health failed in 1914, Polly Thomson became Helen’s companion. See the Karsh portrait of the two together.
We continue to add more outstanding Karsh portraits to the digital database. Two prints of Georgia O’Keeffe from the 1956 Sitting at her home in Abiquiu, New Mexico, have been freshly scanned.
See all of the digitized Karsh portraits of Georgia O’Keeffe.
Professional Canadian ice hockey player Gordie Howe was born on March 31, 1928 (d. 2016). From 1946 to 1980, he played twenty-six seasons in the National Hockey League and six seasons in the World Hockey Association. Nicknamed “Mr. Hockey”, Howe is often considered the most complete player to ever play the game and one of the greatest of all time. At his retirement, his 801 goals, 1049 assists, and 1850 total points were all National Hockey League records that stood until they were broken by Wayne Gretzky. Learn more (Wikipedia).
Each year at this time, the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. commemorates the 1912 gift to the city of 3,000 cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo.
As a democrat, a pacifist, and an internationalist, (Ozaki) represented the earliest stirrings of democracy in his country and, though often jailed, sometimes exiled, and constantly threatened with assassination, he never wavered for a moment in his faith, or in his love for America which, as he said, stood for everything he had sought in his own country.
It was with a sense of reverence, therefore, that I approached the old man – he was in his nineties at the time, in 1950, and had just concluded a tour of the United States. The Dewitt Wallaces, of Reader’s Digest, had asked me to photograph him and the sitting took place in New York in the Waldorf Towers. A wonderful gentleness and an almost saintly look brooded on Ozaki’s face. But they were not easy to catch on film.
Evidently he heard my words with difficulty. His daughter acted as a competent interpreter and as she leaned towards his ear to transmit some amusing remark his countenance lighted up with an oddly childlike expression. It was then I made my picture.
Ozaki lived on to the age of ninety-five. I never saw him again, but whenever I am in Washington at blossom time, and loo at the Japanese cherry trees there, I remember that he gave them, when he was Mayor of Tokyo, to the American people… a living memorial to his faith in human freedom.
From Portraits of Greatness.
The Karsh website celebrates five years alive on the Internet this year. To completely redesign our site we put our heads together with our worldwide agent Camera Press, our colleagues at the MFA Boston and Library and Archives Canada, and our web designer, bigflannel, to ensure the new website was full of rich content, fully searchable, and alive with news and newly digitized images. Thank you for visiting, and come back soon. Cheers!
We are thrilled to add more images of Ralph Bunche to the database. Ralph Johnson Bunche (1903-1971) was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel.
He is the first African American and first person of African descent to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He was involved in the formation and administration of the United Nations and played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous peacekeeping operations sponsored by the UN. In 1963, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy. At the UN, Bunche gained such fame that Ebony magazine proclaimed him perhaps the most influential African American of the first half of the 20th century and “[f]or nearly a decade, he was the most celebrated African American of his time both [in the US] and abroad.” See our other Bunche portraits.
We lost Elizabeth Taylor on this day, March 23, in 2011. Born in 1932, Taylor began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s. At the time of this portrait, made on Valentine’s Day in 1946, she was fourteen years old and had starred in her breakthrough role in National Velvet. Karsh wrote, “She was totally engrossed with her pet chipmunk and cat, the newest additions to her extensive home menagerie. I named the cat Michael. The next day she called to me from an open car on the M.G.M. lot and held up her newest feline friend. “Look who I have with me,” she cried triumphantly, “Michael Karsh Taylor!” (Biography in Images, MFA Boston)
American cabaret singer and pianist Bobby Short died March 21, in 2005 (b. 1924). He was photographed in 1990 for Karsh’s “American Legends” project, and Karsh noted in the subsequent book Karsh: American Legends (1992, Bulfinch Press): “The urbane musician opened a celebratory bottle of champagne while he and his Dalmatian, Chili, companionably shared the flickering candlelight. The next day they left for Paris.”
“The World of Yousuf Karsh” is now open at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax. “I wanted from the beginning, frankly, for this exhibition to come to the immigration museum in Halifax because of the unique bond that Halifax has with the life history of Yousuf Karsh himself,” said Hilliard T. Goldfarb, the emeritus senior curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Hear from Don Conlin, Pier21 curator, and Hilliard Goldfarb, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Emeritus Senior Curator.
On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to urge the passage of legislation guaranteeing voting rights for all.
LBJ (1908-1973) was the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963 under President John F. Kennedy. Johnson’s presidency began following the assassination of President Kennedy. Johnson’s domestic policy was aimed to create programs that would expand civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education and the arts, urban and rural development, and public services. Johnson coined the term the “Great Society” in 1964 to describe these efforts. Read more (Wikipedia).
Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 (d. 1955). Karsh wrote: “At Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, I found Einstein a simple, kindly, almost childlike man, too great for any of the postures of eminence. One did not have to understand his science to feel the power of his mind or the force of his personality. He spoke sadly, yet serenely, as one who had looked into the universe, far past mankind’s small affairs. When I asked him what the world would be like were another atomic bomb to be dropped, he replied wearily, ‘Alas, we will no longer be able to hear the music of Mozart.’”
“The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence” has traveled to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The exhibition opens tomorrow, March 12, 2022. Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts after a gift by Estrellita Karsh of more than 100 original silver gelatin prints, the exhibition features renowned images of political figures alongside portraits of influential figures of theatre, film, music, the visual arts and literature, as well as outstanding scientists and spiritual leaders of the 20th century. “A Private Essence” will also display Karsh’s immortalized images of the cowboys, farmers, steelworkers and icons of culture and artistic achievement who embody the integrity of the Canadian spirit.
“The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence” runs until October 16, 2022.
Pictured here is Canadian contralto, Portia White, known for becoming the first Black Canadian concert singer to achieve international fame and who grew up as part of her father’s church choir in Halifax.
Samuel Barber was born on March 9, in 1910 (d. 1981). Barber was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator. At the age of 10, he wrote his first operetta, “The Rose Tree”, to a libretto by the family’s cook. By the end of his career he had received numerous awards and prizes, including the Rome Prize, two Pulitzer Prizes, the Henry Hadley Medal, and the Gold Medal for Music at the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, as a Fellow, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961.
Mikhail Gorbachev was born on this day, March 2, in 1931.
Repost from 2019: In an interview with the BBC earlier this month, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned that current tension between Russia and the West is putting the world in “colossal danger” due to the threat from nuclear weapons.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was photographed as “President, USSR (Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet)”. The records show that he was photographed at Government House, Ottawa, on May 30, 1990, during an historic visit to Canada where he met with then-prime minister Brian Mulroney.