The Moderate Imagination: The Political Thought of John Updike and the Decline of New Deal Liberalism by Yoav Fromer is out now (University Press of Kansas), featuring this portrait on the cover.

“John Updike has long been acknowledged as one of the great American novelists of the twentieth century, even while his political insights have consistently been under-appreciated. Yoav Fromer’s The Moderate Imagination delivers an important new understanding of Updike’s political instincts and vision. This fuller and more rounded picture of Updike’s literary intentions and his social and political insights will benefit even the experts.” – Cal Jillson, author of The American Dream: In History, Politics, and Fiction

One True Podcast delves into all things related to Hemingway, his work, and his world.

On this episode, we welcome to the show Jerry Fielder and Anne E. Havinga to discuss Yousuf Karsh’s portrait of Hemingway, which is without a doubt the most iconic image of the writer.

Who was Karsh? What was the meeting like between him and Hemingway? Why does this photo, among all those taken of Hemingway (including the others Karsh took), hold such an important place? Our two guests are especially suited to respond to these and other questions.

Fielder joins us as the Director of the Estate of Yousuf Karsh, and Havinga holds the Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Chair of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts. In fact, over the course of the interview we also get the opportunity to hear Estrellita’s reflections on her husband’s session with Hemingway.

Listen here or via your podcast player of choice.

See more portraits of Ernest Hemingway.

The beloved British actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn was born on this day, May 4, in 1929. Hepburn received numerous awards and honors during her career. She won, or was nominated for, awards for her work in motion pictures, television, spoken-word recording, on stage, and humanitarian work. In fact, there is a whole Wikipedia page dedicated solely to her awards and honors.

See another portrait from this Sitting.

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the International Churchill Society has launched a global competition inspired by the famous speeches of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister. The competition – coinciding in May with the 75th anniversary of VE Day and the 80th anniversary of Winston Churchill becoming Prime Minister – encourages participants to write or deliver an inspirational speech of hope in response to the current global challenges. The winner will receive a $10,000 donation for a frontline health organization, hospice, or hospital of their choosing.

In an observation since cited by many including President Kennedy, journalist Edward R. Murrow said that during the Second World War, Winston Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

Anyone may enter by submitting a document of up to 300 words or uploading a video of no longer than 60 seconds and no larger than 2MB to the competition webpage. The competition is open to anyone of all ages, anywhere in the world, whether you are a history enthusiast, a student drawn to Churchill’s example, a teacher looking for a way to inspire your class remotely, or a parent trying to home school your children.

Read more on the International Churchill Society website.

Sir Thomas Beecham was born on this day, April 29, in 1879. Beecham was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of Britain and, according to the BBC, was Britain’s first international conductor. Read more (Wikipedia)

Between December, 1945, and February, 1946, Karsh photographed several musicians for a project noted in the sitting notes as “J. Walter Thompson RCA”. See a list of the other sitters for this particular series.

We heard an extraordinary story from a relative of two people who were photographed by Yousuf Karsh in the 1940s. Pilot Officer Richard Jones was photographed in October, 1942, to represent and promote recruitment in the Canadian Armed Forces. His portrait was published in a magazine, probably Macleans, and a young woman named Loma Mulville saw it and declared, without knowing him, that this is the man she would marry. Sure enough, they met, fell in love, and got engaged. Ms. Mulville went to have her engagement photograph made by Mr. Karsh at his studio in April, 1943. It was only when her fiancé heard who took her photo that they joined the dots and she realized that he was the man in Macleans she had seen many months earlier!

Feel free to share your Karsh story and photos with us!

Thomas Campbell Clark was an American lawyer who served as the 59th United States Attorney General from 1945 to 1949. He was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1949 to 1967, nominated by Harry Truman, and succeeded by Thurgood Marshall.

Clark served on the Warren Court – see the Karsh book The Warren Court.

New to the website are these two portraits of McGeorge Bundy. “Mac” Bundy served as United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 through 1966.

American broadcast journalist Barbara Walters became the first female network news anchor on this day in 1974, when she was promoted from segment producer to co-host of The Today Show, NBC’s morning news program. Walters was photographed by Karsh at her apartment in New York for Harper’s Bazaar.

See a color portrait of Barbara Walters.

See more women who were photographed for Harper’s.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her 94th birthday today, April 21. Born in 1926, she acceded the throne in 1952, and in 2016 she became the world’s longest-reigning current monarch. Her Majesty was photographed by Karsh on five separate occasions. See a list of those sittings. See more images from across the sittings.

Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramicist Joan Miró was born on this day, April 20, in 1893. Karsh wrote of their sitting, in 1965:

Although he painted his inner fantasies with the brightest colors, the great Surrealist arrived at Galerie Maeght self-effacing and subdued, dressed like a banker on holiday. Only when I suggested to him that he don his work clothes did his childlike whimsy assert itself and his humor peek through.

See another portrait from this sitting.

April 14 marks the anniversary of the first publication of John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Set during the Great Depression, the book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Freshly scanned is this portrait of Dr. William Coolidge. Dr. Coolidge was an American physicist and engineer, who made major contributions to X-ray machines. He was the retired director of the General Electric Research Laboratory when he was photographed by Karsh.

In 1913 he invented the Coolidge tube, an X-ray tube with an improved cathode for use in X-ray machines that allowed for more intense visualization of deep-seated anatomy and tumors. The Coolidge tube, which also utilized a tungsten filament, was a major development in the then-nascent medical specialty of radiology. Its basic design is still in use. Read more (Wikipedia)

French “New Wave” actor Jean-Paul Belmondo was born on this day, April 9, in 1933. Belmondo was photographed by Karsh in 1985 for Paris Match. Karsh made several sittings for the French weekly magazine, including Sophia Loren and Gerard Depardieu. See who else.

The world lost the prolific 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:

See more Karsh portraits of Picasso.

Dr. Robert Debré is a freshly scanned new addition to the website. He was a French pediatric physician at Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris, and was photographed in France for Karsh’s “Healers of Our Age, Portfolio II”. See the other doctors who were photographed for that project.

The original Broadway production of Oklahoma! opened on March 31, 1943. It is the first musical written by the team of composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs’ 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs.

1950 was an exceedingly prolific and varied year for Yousuf Karsh: Sitters include violinist Jascha Heifetz; groundbreaking surgeon Dr. Alfred Blalock; and author W. Somerset Maugham.

See more Sittings.

March 30, 2020, marks the 29th anniversary of the assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan. His Vice President at the time was George H.W. Bush, and Secretary of State was Alexander Haig, both of whom were photographed by Karsh. All three were photographed in 1982.

James Callaghan was born on this day, March 27, in 1912. He was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980.

Callaghan was preceded by Harold Wilson, and succeeded by Margaret Thatcher. Both were also photographed by Karsh prior to their premierships: Wilson as President of the Board of Trade in 1949, and Thatcher as Leader of the Opposition in 1976.

On March 26, 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk went on CBS radio to announce his vaccine for poliomyelitis. Salk campaigned for mandatory vaccination, claiming that public health should be considered a “moral commitment”.

Salk was photographed by Karsh in 1956, and again in 1991.

Gloria Steinem was born on this day, March 25, in 1934. The American feminist, journalist, and social political activist became nationally recognized as a leader and a spokeswoman for the American feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In honor of Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday on March 22, we have added this portrait to the others on our website.

When Sondheim was about ten years old, he became friends with James Hammerstein, son of lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. The elder Hammerstein became Sondheim’s surrogate father, influencing him profoundly and developing his love of musical theatre. Sondheim met Hal Prince, who would direct many of his shows, at the opening of South Pacific, Hammerstein’s musical with Richard Rodgers. Read more about the celebrated composer and lyricist (Wikipedia)

See Karsh’s portrait of Hal Prince.

See Karsh’s portrait of Rodgers and Hammerstein.

See the other Karsh portraits of Sondheim.

Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada from 1984-1993, was born on this day, March 20, in 1939. Mulroney served as Prime Minister of Canada from 1984-1993. See other Prime Ministers from around the world who were photographed by Karsh.

Ever eager to hear personal stories from people who interacted with Mr. Karsh, or who were photographed by him, those who were influenced by his images, or ephemera people have discovered in their attics, we encourage people to write in and were thrilled to read this:

Going through my parents’ wedding album from 1944. Included is a menu from their honeymoon train trip from Winnipeg to points east. On the cover of the CPR dining car menu is a beautiful photo of a Mountie by Yousuf Karsh courtesy of Maclean’s magazine.

We found said menu online!  See the whole thing here.

Ballet dancer and choreographer Rudolph Nureyev was born on this day, March 17, in 1938.

Karsh’s original record for this sitting reads: Rudolph Nureyev Appearing with National Ballet in Montreal performance, For National Ballet of Canada project.

“The King of Comedy” Jerry Lewis was born on this day, March 16, in 1926. Lewis was an American comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker and humanitarian. 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. Read more.

Scottish biologist, physician, microbiologist, and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming died on this day, March 11, in 1955. Known best for his discovery of the world’s first antibiotic substance benzylpenicillin (Penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.

Yousuf Karsh photographed dozens of subjects related to the world of medicine, including several Nobel Prize winners. All 15,000+ sittings are searchable on this website. Or search on a keyword such as “medicine” and see who you find!

American author, politician, ambassador and public conservative figure Clare Boothe Luce was born on this day, March 10, in 1903. According to Wikipedia, politically, Luce was a leading conservative in later life and was well known for her anti-communism.

In her youth, she briefly aligned herself with the liberalism of President Franklin Roosevelt as a protégé of Bernard Baruch, but later became an outspoken critic of Roosevelt. Read more.

Boothe Luce was the wife of Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated.

This portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt features in the March 16, 2020, issue of TIME as the magazine honors Women’s History Month. And further, TIME has created a list of 100 Women of the Year:

For 72 years, TIME named a Man of the Year. With a few exceptions, it was almost always a man, usually a President or a Prime Minister or perhaps a titan of industry. Throughout history, these are the kinds of men who have wielded influence over the world.

In 1999, Man of the Year gave way to Person of the Year. While the name rightly changed, too often the choice was the same. With this 100 Women of the Year project, we’re spotlighting influential women who were often overshadowed.

Other women who were photographed by Karsh and who are named in the 100 include Martha Graham, Queen Elizabeth II, Jacqueline Kennedy, Gloria Steinem, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher.

American writer Pearl Buck died on this day, March 6, in 1973. She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1938.

The Nobel Prize committee in awarding the prize said:

By awarding this year’s Prize to Pearl Buck for the notable works which pave the way to a human sympathy passing over widely separated racial boundaries and for the studies of human ideals which are a great and living art of portraiture, the Swedish Academy feels that it acts in harmony and accord with the aim of Alfred Nobel’s dreams for the future.

See a portrait of Pearl Buck at her desk.

This portrait of Albert Einstein is recognized as one of Mr. Karsh’s most iconic images. Einstein was born on March 14, in 1879. He was photographed by Karsh at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. Here is a behind-the-scenes image, and the second frame from the sitting.

Cardiology magazine from the American College of Cardiology features this portrait of Helen Taussig in their article “Pediatric Cardiology: A Specialty Spurred by the Groundbreaking Work of Women – The Legacies of Maude Abbott, MD, and Helen B. Taussig, MD, FACC.”

Caring for children who were destined to die from heart disease before they could walk, talk or attend school was not a relevant profession in the first half of the 20th century. In the male-dominated field of medicine, caring for these children who were certain to die before adulthood was viewed as work best left to those with maternal instincts: women.

A century later, that once marginalized job is a dynamic specialty built on the groundbreaking work of two women who overcame archaic attitudes by following their scientific instincts. Armed with determination, intelligence and curiosity, Maude Abbott, MD, and Helen B. Taussig, MD, FACC, cleared the hurdles placed in front of women interested in science, eventually earning medical degrees and laying the foundation for the modern specialty of pediatric cardiology.

In the mid-1940s, she worked with surgeon Alfred Blalock, MD, and surgical technician Vivien Thomas to develop the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt that improved pulmonary blood flow in blue babies with tetralogy of Fallot, allowing them to survive.

Dr. Taussig was Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, when she was photographed by Karsh in 1975.

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak was an Egyptian military and political leader who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011. He was photographed by Karsh in Ottawa in 1983. According to UPI Archives, Mubarak was in Ottawa for a two-day state visit and talks with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (who was photographed by Karsh in 1968, and 1982).

British-American actress Elizabeth Taylor was born on this day, February 27, in 1932. Taylor began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s. At the time of this portrait, taken on Valentine’s Day in 1946, she was fourteen years old and had starred in her breakthrough role in “National Velvet”. A two time winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress, she went on to become not only one of the greatest film legends of the 20th Century but also a dedicated humanitarian. In 1999, Queen Elizabeth appointed her Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

February marks the 58th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbit of the Earth – the first American to make this journey, circling our planet three times. Following his retirement from NASA, he served from 1974 to 1999 as a Democratic United States senator from Ohio, and in 1998 flew into space again at age 77.

John Glenn was photographed by Yousuf Karsh on June 29, 1968. Karsh would go on to photograph the Apollo II crew, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, in 1969.

See a different portrait of John Glenn in NASAwear.

Landscape photographer, environmentalist, and friend and colleague of Yousuf Karsh, Ansel Adams was born on this day, February 20, in 1902. Adams helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. Adams and Karsh taught workshops together in Yosemite in the late ’70s and to this day we are in touch with some of their students. Read more and see a photograph of the two great men together. See more Karsh portraits of Adams.

The exhibition “LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography” opens this week at Princeton University Art Museum. Karsh photographs featured on more than 20 LIFE covers during his lifetime, spanning four decades.

From the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, the vast majority of the photographs printed and consumed in the United States appeared on the pages of illustrated magazines. Offering an in-depth look at the photography featured in LIFE magazine throughout its weekly run from 1936 to 1972, this exhibition examines how the magazine’s use of images fundamentally shaped the modern idea of photography in the United States. The work of photographers such as Karsh is explored in the context of the creative and editorial structures at LIFE. Drawing on unprecedented access to the magazine’s picture and paper archives, as well as photographers’ archives, the exhibition presents an array of materials, including caption files, contact sheets, and shooting scripts, that shed new light on the collaborative process behind many now-iconic images and photo-essays.

On sale this month is the accompanying book, edited by Kristen Gresh, the Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Katherine A. Bussard, the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at Princeton University Art Museum.

The exhibition opens on February 22, 2020, and runs until June 21, 2020.

New to our digital archives: Felix Frankfurter, an Austrian-American lawyer, professor, and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Frankfurter served on the Supreme Court from 1939 to 1962 and was a noted advocate of judicial restraint in the judgments of the Court. Karsh photographed Frankfurter on assignment for LIFE – see a list of others who Karsh photographed for the magazine.

Today is the Presidents’ Day federal holiday in the United States which is celebrated annually on the third Monday of February in honor of George Washington, the first President of the United States.

Karsh photographed twelve United States Presidents, from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton. He also photographed many foreign presidents, and corporate presidents. A free-text search in our Sittings database returns all of them, from a 1936 sitting with Dr. Karl T. Compton, President, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, to Mr. Alonzo L. McDonald, President, Bendix Corporation, 1981.

On this day, February 12, in 2000, the world lost one of its most beloved cartoonists, Charles “Sparky” Schulz. Schulz is most well known for his hugely successful Peanuts series, which at its height was published daily in 2,600 papers in 75 countries, in 21 languages. During the strip’s run, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday; reruns of the strip ran during his vacation, the only time that occurred during Schulz’s life. Read more (Wikipedia)

In Karsh’s book American Legends (Bullfinch Press, 1992) Karsh wrote of the artist “He presented me with America’s favorite beagle, a tiny velvet “Snoopy,” as a gift to my wife, and it remains among her favorite sentimental treasures.”