This month marks the anniversary of the first issue of LIFE magazine published by its new owner Henry Luce. From 1883, LIFE had been a humor and general interest magazine. Luce bought the title in 1936. Convinced that pictures could tell a story instead of just illustrating text, Luce launched the new LIFE on November 23rd of that year. LIFE developed as the definitive photo magazine in the U.S., giving as much space and importance to images as to words. Read more (Wikipedia).

Yousuf Karsh photographed dozens of people for the magazine, beginning with this portrait of Henry Luce in 1944. Click here to see the list of LIFE Sitters.

This portrait of Luce can be seen in a new special issue “LIFE: Pearl Harbor 80 Years Later.”

This week, the universe lost one of its most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Stephen Sondheim. Karsh photographed Sondheim in 1986, between Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987).

Sondheim’s accolades include eight Tony Awards, an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has a theater named for him both on Broadway and in the West End of London.

See more Karsh portraits of Sondheim.

French novelist and art theorist André Malraux died on this day, November 23, in 1976 (b. 1901). Malraux was appointed by President Charles de Gaulle as Minister of Information (1945-46) and subsequently as France’s first Minister of Cultural Affairs during de Gaulle’s presidency (1959-69).

André Malraux was photographed by Karsh in 1954. Charles de Gaulle was photographed in 1944.

John Tuzo Wilson, 1908-1993, was a Canadian geophysicist and geologist who achieved worldwide acclaim for his contributions to the theory of plate tectonics. He was photographed in 1938 as Colonel J. Tuzo Wilson, serving with the Royal Canadian Engineers. There will be a book about Wilson coming out next year and the Wilson family has shared this scan of their beautiful Karsh print.

In 1982, a young filmmaker wrote a letter to his literary idol, proposing a documentary on the author’s life and work. Kurt Vonnegut soon met with Robert Weide and authorized the production. Weide thought it would take a few months to raise the needed financing, and figured a film could be completed within the year… Nearly 40 years later, IFC Films will be releasing the documentary, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time in theaters and on video-on-demand in North America on November 19, 2021.

Watch the trailer.

Hollywood leading man Clark Gable died on November 16, 1960 (b. 1901). He had roles in more than 60 motion pictures in multiple genres during a career that lasted 37 years. Gable died of a heart attack at the age of 59; his final on-screen appearance was of an aging cowboy in The Misfits, released posthumously in 1961.

Karsh photographed an array of luminaries in 1948 including Martha Graham, Thomas Watson, Lilly Daché, and Albert Einstein.

A new adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s 1951 book Foundations is available now on Apple TV+. The first season gets a non-too-positive review in the New Yorker: “The TV version of the classic sci-fi saga sidelines its source’s most pressing questions about power and precarity.” While Variety calls it “a sharp remix.”

The American actress-turned-Princess Grace Kelly was born on November 12, 1929. Kelly retired from acting at age 26 to marry Rainier Prince Rainier III in April, 1956. She was photographed by Karsh in September of that year. He wrote: “The animated movie star welcomed me to her New York apartment in blue jeans, with her hair in curlers! Newly engaged to Rainier, the Prince of Monaco, she was in the throes of preparing for her departure for her new life far from the Hollywood sound stages. A few moments later, after running a comb through her hair and quickly changing her clothes, the beautiful woman, and future Serene Highness, emerged.”

See more portraits of the Prince and Princess.

The beloved children’s television program Sesame Street debuted on this day, November 10, in 1969, and featured Jim Henson’s Muppets. In 2018, it was estimated that 86 million Americans had watched the series as children. As of that year, Sesame Street had won 189 Emmy Awards and 11 Grammy Awards, more than any other children’s show. By the show’s 40th anniversary in 2009, it was broadcast in more than 140 countries.

Jim Henson was photographed in 1990, and his portrait was published in American Legends.

“From Tradecraft and Trench Coats to Magic and Adventure: When Spies Write for Children” is an article by Henry Schlesinger out now in Publishers Weekly.

Schlesinger writes: “That so many former spies became novelists is not surprising. To resort to an easy aphorism, both professions tell lies to tell truths. However, that children’s literature has also attracted its fair share of intelligence practitioners is more than a little unexpected. Espionage, among the most pragmatic of professions, is not known for its whimsy. If truth be told, espionage credibly ranks among the least whimsical of professions.” He covers Grahame Greene, illustrated with our portrait; Roald Dahl; Ian Fleming, and A. A. Milne.

Read the article.

Canadian guitarist, singer-song writer, and photographer, Bryan Adams was born this day, November 5, in 1959. Adams’ awards and nominations include 20 Juno Awards among 56 nominations and 15 Grammy Award nominations, including a win for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television in 1992 (“(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”). For his songwriting for films, Adams has been nominated for three times for Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.

Despite being 81 years old, Karsh was still very prolific in 1989 with diverse sitters including Berenice Abbott,  Benazir Bhutto, Helen Hayes, and Dr. Andrei Sakharov.

Broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite was born on this day, November 4, in 1916 (d. 2009). He served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years, from 1962 to 1981. A poll taken in 1972 named him “the most trusted man in America” – more so than the president at that time, Richard Nixon.

On this day, November 3, in 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected as president of the United States. Earlier that year FDR was the first American President to pay an official visit to the Dominion of Canada. Karsh wrote: “There to greet him and his son James Roosevelt were Lord Tweedsmuir, the Governor General of Canada; Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King; and, a great deal of International press.

“This photograph was made on the terrace of the Citadel at Quebec overlooking the St. Lawrence and the Beaufort Shore where Wolfe unsuccessfully assaulted the entrenched forces of Montcalm. Earlier in the afternoon, there had been a roundup of notables for the news photographers, when fifty or more cameramen engaged in another formidable assault by flashlight bulbs. I was unable to take part in the melee with my equipment, and, after the gathering broke up, bemoaned my bad luck to the Comptroller of the Household, an old friend. He significantly suggested that I stick around.

Later in the afternoon President Roosevelt appeared with his son James, Lord Tweedsmuir, and the Canadian Prime Minister. They had come out for a breath of air and were quite willing to be photographed again. They proceeded rather self-consciously, standing stiffly erect, side-by-side, like soldiers at attention. I pretended to click the shutter and said, “Thank you, very much.” The ordeal over, Tweedsmuir began to tell one of his Scottish stories and everyone relaxed. This time I did click the shutter.”

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw died on this day, November 2, in 1950. He wrote more than sixty plays and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Karsh photographed Shaw at Shaw’s home in England, in 1943. “Shaw came bursting into the room with the energy of a young man, though he was almost ninety years old.” Read more of Karsh’s story of the Sitting.

American virologist and medical researcher Jonas Salk was born on this day, October 28, in 1914 (d. 1995). In 1947, Salk accepted a professorship in the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. It was there that he undertook a project to determine the number of different types of poliovirus, starting in 1948. For the next seven years, Salk devoted himself towards developing a vaccine against polio. The vaccine’s success was first made public in April, 1955. By 1959, the Salk vaccine had reached about 90 countries. Less than 25 years after the release of Salk’s vaccine, domestic transmission of polio had been completely eliminated in the United States.

See more portraits of Jonas Salk.

“Le monde de Yousuf Karsh: L’essence dujet / The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence” is on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts now through January 30, 2022. This beautifully printed catalog is available for purchase through the museum’s online gift shop for those of you unable to make a visit in person. Get your copy here.

“Turn Every Page”: Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive is the first public exhibition drawn from the archive of the author whose award-winning works on Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson are regarded as masterpieces of modern biography and history. Caro used Karsh’s portrait of Johnson on the cover of his book The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume 4 (Knopf, 2012).

“The ongoing exhibition includes never-before-seen highlights from the archive – which New-York Historical acquired in 2019 – that provide an intimate view of how Caro started his career and how he worked as a reporter.

Caro’s meticulousness as a reporter, biographer, and historian – which enabled him to become the country’s premier chronicler of political power – is on view to the public in his research notebooks, handwritten interview notes, scrapbooks, photographs, and original manuscript pages.” Read more.

The new documentary Becoming Cousteau from National Geographic “takes an inside look at Cousteau and his life, his iconic films and inventions, and the experiences that made him the 20th century’s most unique and renowned environmental voice – and the man who inspired generations to protect the Earth.”

Becoming Cousteau is playing now exclusively in movie theaters.

 

This summer Sony Masterworks released “Marian Anderson – Beyond the Music,” a special 15-CD edition celebrating contralto Marian Anderson, the first Black singer at the Met who sang for presidents and kings, and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A review in the New Yorker is titled “Marian Anderson’s Bone-Chilling Rendition of “Crucifixion”. Her performances of the Black spiritual in the nineteen-thirties caused American and European audiences to fall silent in awe.” And in Karsh’s reminiscences, he wrote: “What struck me most…when I photographed her at her home in Connecticut in 1945, was her simplicity and peacefulness. None of my early shots satisfied me in the least. All of them, I felt, has missed the intangible target. I began to despair. Then, towards the conclusion of the sitting, Miss Anderson’s accompanist came in for a rehearsal. This seemed to be my chance. I asked him, in a whisper, to play very softly the accompaniment to “Crucifixion”, one of the singer’s favourite compositions. Unaware of my innocent little plot, she began to hum to herself. Hurriedly, I snapped the camera. When I developed and printed the film I felt like it contained what I had seen with my own eyes. This is the portrait of a harmonious soul revealing itself unconsciously in song.” Learn more about the CD set.

Canadian-American business woman Elizabeth Arden died on this day, October 18, in 1966. Born Florence Nightingale Graham in 1881, she went by the name Elizabeth Arden and founded the cosmetics company that is now Elizabeth Arden, Inc. She was the sole owner, and at the peak of her career, she was one of the wealthiest women in the world. Arden was photographed by Karsh in 1948 for Coronet Magazine. See who else was photographed for Coronet.

On October 14, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance.

Karsh wrote: “In August 1962 I was asked to hurry down to Atlanta, Georgia, to photograph the Reverend Martin Luther King for a national publication. He had just returned home from nearby Albany, where for months he had been leading the most concentrated and sustained assault on segregation seen till then in the South… This young minister, only 33 when the picture was taken, had been leading the civil rights battle since the bus boycott in Montgomery six years earlier. He had already seen many barriers fall; he had helped to engender a new spirit. “Without a movement like the one in Albany,” he said, “thousands of Negroes would still be walking around with their heads buried. Now they have become organized and articulate. They walk with a new sense of dignity and self-respect.”

As I flew back to Ottawa that evening and the quiet coolness of Little Wings, my home on the Rideau River, I thought of something else he had said: “No social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of dedicated individuals.” No man in America personified better than Martin Luther King the dedication of his people to their” inalienable rights.

Henry K. Beecher was a pioneering American anesthesiologist, medical ethicist, and investigator of the placebo effect. An article by Beecher in 1966 on unethical medical experimentation in the New England Journal of Medicine – “Ethics and Clinical Research” – was instrumental in the implementation of federal rules on human experimentation and informed consent. This image will feature in an upcoming video series produced by Massachusetts General Hospital celebrating this week’s 175th anniversary of the first successful public demonstration of the use of ether for surgical anesthesia, making pain-free surgery possible. The videos will highlight the work of important Massachusetts General Hospital anesthesiologists throughout time. The sitting record shows that Dr. Beecher was photographed at Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard University.

On October 11, 1975, William Jefferson Clinton married Hillary Rodham. The 42nd President of the United States took office on January 20, 1993, and on May 6 of that year, Karsh photographed them both. Karsh had closed his studio the year before and was now eighty-four but he headed to the White House to record his twelfth US president.

South African Anglican cleric and theologian, Desmond Tutu, was born on this day, October 7, in 1931. Tutu is known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was the Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then the Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position.

See more portraits of Tutu.

Press coverage is rolling in for our exhibition at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. “Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence” is on view now through January, 2022.

See The Eye of Photography; Montreal Gazette;Le Soleil;The Suburban.

October 5th marks the anniversary of Earl Warren’s swearing-in as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1953. He would serve until 1969.

The “Warren Court” presided over a major shift in American constitutional jurisprudence, with Warren writing the majority opinions in landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Reynolds v. Sims (1964), Miranda v. Arizona (1966) and Loving v. Virginia (1967).

In 1964, Macmillan published The Warren Court with photographs by Yousuf Karsh, and text by John P. Frank, an American lawyer and scholar involved in landmark civil rights, school desegregation, and criminal procedure cases before the United States Supreme Court.

Approximately 30 Karsh Sittings mention “Supreme Court” in their records, with justices primarily from the US and Canada. See them all here.

Now on view at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, “Influence and Identity: Twentieth Century Portrait Photography from the Bank of America Collection” features the works of international photographers from the early through the mid-twentieth century, a period often called the golden age of portrait photography. The exhibition includes works by master portraitists such as Antony Armstrong-Jones, Richard Avedon and Yousuf Karsh, as well as renowned photographers Berenice Abbot, Ansel Adams, and Garry Winogrand. Using photography, a medium born of the modern era, these artists produced images that capture the commanding personalities of celebrated figures in popular culture, politics and the arts.

This exhibition has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in our Communities® program.

Exhibition hours:
Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Or by appointment: Please contact the Arts Coordinator Amy Hart to request a scheduled viewing.

Charlton Heston was born on this day, October 4, in 1923 (d. 2008). He was photographed by Karsh in 1956 during filming of “The Ten Commandments”, both in-costume, and behind-the-scenes with his son, Fraser (who is himself a film director, producer, screenwriter and actor). See some other, recently added, portraits of Charlton Heston.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on this day, October 1, in 1924. The 39th President of the United States was photographed not long before he would leave office, in January of 1981.

Karsh photographed twelve United States Presidents, from Herbert Hoover (1948) to Bill Clinton (1993). Read more.

Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, in 1928 (d. 2016). Karsh noted in American Legends:”In his book-lined study, I found an erudite storyteller, a Holocaust survivor who has retained a bittersweet sense of life and placed it in the service of worldwide peace and human rights.”

The American crime drama “Murder, She Wrote” debuted on this day in 1984. In the role of the main character, Jessica Fletcher, Angela Lansbury was nominated for ten Golden Globes and 12 Emmy Awards, winning four Golden Globe awards. She holds the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. In 2013, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

Karsh photographed Ms. Lansbury – when she was aged 20 – in 1946; she had already starred in “National Velvet” (1944) which saw Lansbury developing a lifelong friendship with co-star Elizabeth Taylor whom Karsh also photographed that year. Lansbury was photographed again in 1990.

The Swedish actress Anita Ekberg was born on this day, September 29, in 1931 (d. 2015). Karsh wrote of their Sitting: “The smorgasbord was already lavishly spread on the table of Anita Ekberg’s California home when I arrived. Her natural behavior resembled the love goddesses she portrayed – uninhibited and seductive and totally without guile. When changing from one gown to another, she ignored the screen her attendant had placed before her.”

See another portrait of Ekberg, with her poodle.

This and more Karsh stories can be read in A Biography in Images (MFA Publications, 2006/2019).

Actress, singer, and animal rights activist Brigitte “B.B.” Bardot, turned 87 on September 28, 2021. Karsh wrote of their sitting: “I happened to return to Paris directly from the Vatican photographing Pope John XXIII. And the word had reached her that the person that [is] about to photograph you has just come directly from Rome. And with her typical charm and touch of gaiety, she said, ‘Is it true you have just come from photographing Pope John the 23rd?’ I said, yes. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘ from the saint to the sinner.’ We have in our home two magnificent sculptures called L’amor sacre and L’amor profane executed by Louis Legge. But, I still don’t know which is which. And so when Brigitte referred to herself as the sinner, I questioned that completely.”

http://https://vimeo.com/190919031

On September 24, 1968, CBS aired the first episode of 60 Minutes, an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS network. The New York Times has called it “one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television.”

60 Minutes hosts Morley Safer and Walter Cronkite were photographed by Karsh, in 1977 and 1979, respectively. In the video above, Safer talks to Karsh about Karsh’s constructive approach to making portraits. In another segment for the program, Safer and Karsh recreate the making of Karsh’s 1941 portrait of Winston Churchill.

French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo died earlier this month. Belmondo was initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s and was a major French film star for several decades. Belmondo was photographed by Karsh in 1985 for Paris Match. Karsh photographed several people for Paris Match in 1981 and 1985, including Jacques Chirac, Gerard Depardieu, Sophia Loren, and Alain Delon. See the others.

 

We are thrilled to announce the opening of “The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

After a gift to the MMFA by Estrellita Karsh of more than 100 original silver gelatin prints, the exhibition will feature renowned images of political figures, including Fidel Castro, Winston Churchill, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Adding to them will be Karsh’s compelling 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 exhibition will trace the chronology of the artist’s life and stylistic development and the evolving world history he so brilliantly documented. Many photographs are accompanied by short texts quoting from the artist’s own recorded impressions and thoughts on his subjects during his sessions.

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His 1918 book “Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man” was recently reissued by New York Review of Books, with an introduction by Mark Lilla. In an essay in the New York Times Book Review last weekend, which is illustrated using this portrait by Karsh, Christopher Beha writes: “Reflections” is a strange, frequently off-putting book, a 500-page assault on democracy, enlightenment and reason that is also an act of petty score-settling, written in a frothing tone completely at odds with the stately irony for which Mann is remembered. And yet, at the moment, the book feels not just worthy of our attention but somehow indispensable.” Read more (subscription).

The English author H. G. Wells was born on this day, September 21, in 1866 (d. 1946). Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. A futurist and “visionary”, Wells foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. Read more (Wikipedia).

Wells was photographed on Karsh’s trip to England in 1943. Others who were photographed include authors George Bernard Shaw and Noël Coward.

On September 15, 1978, boxer Muhammad Ali defeated Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, the first fighter ever to do so.

French photographer and painter Jacques Henri Lartigue died on September 12, in 1986 (b. 1894). Born in western Paris to a wealthy family, Lartigue started taking photographs when he was seven, recording his friends and family at play.

Karsh photographed Lartigue in 1951, and the Sitting notes read: “Guest at Roger Therond’s home when YK visited during trip to Paris, March 1981.” Therond was editor of Paris Match at the time.