Yousuf Karsh, master photographer of the 20th century
Indira Gandhi was born on November 19, in 1917. She was the first and, to date, the only female Prime Minister of India.
Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. Gandhi served as Prime Minister from January 1966 to March 1977 and again from January 1980 until her assassination in October 1984, making her the second longest-serving Indian Prime Minister, after her father.
Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, inventor, teacher, and environmental activist Margaret Atwood turned 80 this week. Since 1961, she has published 17 books of poetry, 16 novels, 10 books of non-fiction, eight collections of short fiction, eight children’s books, and one graphic novel, as well as a number of small press editions in poetry and fiction.
Atwood was photographed by Karsh in 1977 for his book Karsh Canadians (1978, University of Toronto Press) but she was also photographed in 1985 as “One of group of writers photographed together for Apple Canada, Inc. Including Charles Templeton, Ben Wicks, Harold Towne, Veronica Tennant, Margaret Atwood.”
Jawaharlal Nehru was born on this day, November 14, in 1889. Nehru was an Indian independence activist, and subsequently, the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics before and after independence. He served India as Prime Minister from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in 1964. Nehru was photographed twice by Karsh, in 1949 and in 1956.
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.
November 11 marks the end of World War I, in 1919, and is observed as a day of remembrance in several countries, including Veterans’ Day in the US, and Remembrance Day in the UK and Canada.
General Andrew George Latta McNaughton, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., M.Sc., D.C.L., LL.D. was a Canadian soldier, inventor, scholar, and scientist. Twice wounded in World War I, he became: President, National Research Council in 1933; Commander, First Canadian Army in 1939; and, Minister of National Defense in 1944.
Karsh wrote:
The founder of Canada’s modern army, and the man upon whose shoulders rested the principal responsibility for the defense of Britain in the months that followed Dunkirk, came to my studio in Ottawa, during a short leave following a long and tedious tour of duty in Britain. He was so tense that it was difficult to find a good angle from which to take him. Thinking that it might prove relaxing, I suggested that he try walking up and down. Ever since, I’ve been accused of exhausting the General by putting him through a campaign route march. However, I was able to catch this picture during one of his halts, and, in certain ways, I consider it one of the most successful I have ever made.
Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti will be the subjects of a new museum opening in Beijing in 2020. Paris’s National Picasso Museum and the Giacometti Foundation are teaming up to manage the new institution for at least the first five years, from June 2020 through June 2025. (After that, they may extend the partnership or hand the museum over to Chinese management.) The institution will present up to four exhibitions each year. These two are just an example of the many artists photographed by Karsh. Explore our Selected Archive for more or search all the sittings for a particular person.
French philosopher, author and journalist Albert Camus was born on this day, November 7, in 1913. Three years after he was photographed by Karsh, Camus would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the second-youngest recipient of this Prize, at the age of 44 – Rudyard Kipling was 42 when he received his.
Perkins and Will – Lawrence Perkins and Philip Will – established their global architecture and design firm in 1935. This photograph will feature in an upcoming book about the architects, designers, and urban planners who have lived and worked in Evanston, Illinois, since the late 1800s. The firm Perkins and Will still exists today, designing buildings the world over – see a timeline.
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is a 1966 American animated television special based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. Happy Halloween to Peanuts fans thinking about “The Great Pumpkin” today.
Karsh photographed Schultz in 1986 for advertising giants Ogilvy and Mather.
Muhammad Ali became the heavyweight champion of the world for the second time on this day in 1974, when he knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of the “Rumble in the Jungle,” a match in Kinshasa.
Karsh photographed Muhammad Ali for Look Magazine‘s “Under 30” series. See who else he photographed.
Baruj Benacerraf was born on this day, October 29, in 1920. He was a Venezuelan-American immunologist, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the “discovery of the major histocompatibility complex genes which encode cell surface protein molecules important for the immune system’s distinction between self and non-self.”
He was photographed in 1988 during his tenure as president of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and is one of several Nobel Prize winners in our archives.
Jonas Salk was born on this day, October 28, in 1914. Salk discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines, and his late years were spent searching for a vaccine against HIV.
Read about the Karsh Estate’s relationship with The Salk Institute.
A mystery is solved thanks to our wonderful colleagues at Archives Canada, where the Karsh Fonds are held. Jill Delaney, lead archivist, was able to fill in the blanks for an Ottawa Citizen reader who submitted a photograph by Karsh whose subject was unidentified. It turned out to be Dr. Robert James Manion (1881-1943), in his office as Leader of the Official Opposition (the Conservatives) taken on March 23, 1939. Manion, running for prime minister, was defeated by Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
King was a friend, patron, and supporter of Karsh’s early years as a photographer, and played an important part in opening the doors of opportunity. Learn more.
Jackie Robinson, who was the first African-American to play in US major league baseball, died on this day, October 24, in 1972. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.
Born a century ago in 1919, he died of a heart attack at just 53 years old.
The Guggenheim Museum opened on October 21 in 1959, on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. It adopted its current name after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1952.
In 1959, the museum moved to its current building, a landmark work of 20th-century architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The cylindrical building is wider at the top than at the bottom and was conceived as a “temple of the spirit”.
Eleanor Roosevelt was born on this day, October 11, in 1884. She served as the First Lady of the United States from March 4, 1933, to April 12, 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s four terms in office, making her the longest-serving.
Following her husband’s death in 1945, Roosevelt remained active in politics for the remaining 17 years of her life. She pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate. She served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Read more (Wikipedia)
This glorious portrait is used in promotional materials by the US National Park Service at the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York.
October 5th marks the anniversary of Earl Warren’s swearing-in as the 14th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953. He would sit 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).
He is, as of 2019, the last Chief Justice to have served in an elected office before entering the Supreme Court, and is generally considered to be one of the most influential Supreme Court justices and political leaders in the history of United States. Read more (Wikipedia).
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.
Charlton Heston was born on this day, October 4, in 1923. 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).
American soprano Jessye Norman has died. Ms. Norman won four Grammy Awards for her recordings, as well as a lifetime achievement award, and was granted the National Medal of Arts in 2009.
60 Minutes debuted on American television in September, 1968. One of America’s most beloved news programs still broadcasts on CBS, where correspondent Morley Safer worked for 50 years. He filed more than 900 stories during his tenure.
Watch this delightful video in which Mr. Karsh explains to Morley Safer the conditions under which Karsh made his most famous portrait of all, Winston Churchill, in its original location at the Chambers of the Canadian House of Parliament.
Jacques Chirac, former French president, has died. M. Chirac was elected to two consecutive terms as president, beginning in 1995, having already served as prime minister. Karsh photographed Chirac in 1981 for Paris Match.
The creative genius Jim Henson was born on this day, September 24, in 1936. Henson died before his time, not long after he sat with Mr. Karsh for this shining portrait, a photograph beloved by Mr. Henson’s family. And as you can see, Mr. Karsh loved Kermit as much as the rest of us.
A print of this portrait was most recently included in the traveling exhibition “Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits.”
New to the digital archives is this beautiful scan of the one and only Harold Prince. We honored Mr. Prince in a previous post when we heard the sad news of his passing. We are happy to be adding to the archives on a regular basis. If you are looking for a particular subject, use the Sittings search and then drop us a line.
Actress and singer Sophia Loren was born on this day, September 20, in 1934.
Sophia Loren won an Academy Award for “Two Women” in 1960, and she has won a Grammy Award, five special Golden Globes, a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Honorary Academy Award in 1991. In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievements, one of many such awards. In 1999, Loren was named by the American Film Institute the 21st greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema, and she is currently the only living actress on the list. Read more (Wikipedia)
See more photographs from the sitting, including one of Ms. Loren’s personal favorites of herself with her son, Edoardo.
The Testaments is Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, out now from Vintage Books. Set 15 years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, the novel traces the continued evolution of Atwood’s totalitarian state of Gilead, where women are reduced to their wombs and justification is found in the Bible for every abuse of power.
Karsh photographed Atwood in 1977 to be included in Karsh: Canadians, University of Toronto Press, 1978.
“Reflection: 180 Years in Photography” opened in August at The Ellen Noel Art Museum in Odessa, Texas. The exhibition is guest curated by Odessa College Photography Professor and President of the Texas Photographic Society, Steve Goff, who included two original photographs by Yousuf Karsh: George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Hemingway.
“Photography can be seen as a combination of science and art, in which advances in technique that continually feed creativity and artistic achievement. This exhibition represents a survey of photography with works by renowned masters along with examples of the evolution of personal photography.” The show runs until November 24, 2019. Visit Noel Art Museum website for more details.
The Lévy Gorvy Gallery in New York is pleased to announce “Pierre Soulages: A Century”, an exhibition celebrating the 100th birthday of France’s foremost living artist through a presentation of works spanning his career from the 1950s to today. On view from September 5 through October 26, 2019, this focused survey explores the artist’s enduring role in the dialogue between European and American painting and invites viewers to consider the impact of a practice that has injected profound poetry into radical abstraction through its adherence to a single material: black paint.
Yousuf Karsh photographed Pierre Soulages in France in April, 1965. Other artists who were photographed in France that month include Jean-Paul Riopelle and Ossip Zadkine.
These two characters co-hosted a workshop in Yosemite in 1977, and thanks to social media, we heard a new tale from the event. Photographer Gary Faye attended four of Adams’ workshops. He told us:
Ansel invited excellent instructors from specialties other than landscape. Karsh was one of those greats.
The class format was a series of seminars with conversational breaks and field practice sessions. I was fortunate to be present at several personal moments. One of these was a portrait session with Ansel and Karsh. This was a short break, Polaroid at the ready while a Karsh assistant acted as a human light stand providing illumination. I just happened to be in a good spot with a camera. I only made one frame, not wanting to intrude.
Karsh and Ansel were strolling in a field with light banter and Karsh suggested Ansel had an unfair advantage/alliance with the gods whereby dramatic weather would appear whenever desired.
At that exact moment there was a loud thunderclap whereby Ansel extended his hands as acceptance of the celestial gift and Karsh laughing, clapped his hands enthusiastically.
The Estate is also in touch with Karsh’s assistant at the time, Alan Ross. Some of Alan’s photographs from this same workshop are below.
And finally, the set up for Karsh’s portrait of Adams – you can see Karsh’s choices here.
“The Roaring Lion” is launching this month from The Royal Canadian Mint. This limited edition collectible is the third coin that features an image by Karsh and as usual the product is spectacular.
The coin features a reproduction of Yousuf Karsh’s portrait of Churchill, known as “The Roaring Lion” after Churchill’s comment to Karsh “You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed!”
Our director, Mr. Fielder and Mrs. Karsh joined our colleagues at the Mint for a private tour earlier this year. See the Mint’s blog post about their visit.
See the Princess Elizabeth coin.
Watch Karsh recreate the Churchill portrait.
The paperback version of Andrew Roberts’ Churchill biography “Walking With Destiny” is out now from Penguin Random House featuring Karsh’s most famous portrait on the cover, and also on the spine.
“Unarguably the best single-volume biography of Churchill… A brilliant feat of storytelling, monumental in scope, yet put together with tenderness for a man who had always believed that he would be Britain’s savior.” – Wall Street Journal
In honor of the upcoming Labor Day holiday in the US, we present John L. Lewis. Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s.
After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, he took the Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944, the year that he was photographed by Karsh, he took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Read more (Wikipedia)
Fifty-six years ago, in August, 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Karsh noted: “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… No man in America personified better than Martin Luther King the dedication of his people to their inalienable rights.” Read more.
In 1938 Karsh photographed founding members of the C.C.F, The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Founded in 1932, it was a social-democratic and democratic socialist political party in Canada, and was succeeded by today’s New Democratic Party when the C.C.F. merged with the Canadian Labour Congress. Thanks go to our colleagues at the Library and Archives Canada for recently digitizing this photograph.
Mr. Karsh’s card file records begin in 1933, and he maintained a card for each sitting from 1933 to 1993, each of which has been transcribed and is searchable on this website.
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, known as Mother Teresa, was born on this day, August 26, in 1910. She began working in the slums of Calcutta in India in 1948 and went on to found the Missionaries of Charity, orphanages, hospitals and hospices dedicated to the sick and the poor. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
All of Karsh’s more than 15,000 sittings were recorded on individual card files, and the data on those cards is searchable on this website. The “Sitter Card” for Mother Teresa reads: Photographed during visit to Ottawa at Chapel, Archdiocese of Ottawa Archbishop’s Residence.
See other Nobel Prize winners who were photographed by Karsh.
American theatrical producer and director Harold “Hal” Prince died last month. Prince is associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the 20th century.
Over the span of his career, he garnered 21 Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year’s Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, hosted a lecture with Mr. Prince in 2012, where he met with Mrs. Karsh and posed with a Karsh portrait of himself from 1989.
Comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker and humanitarian, Jerry Lewis, died on this day, August 20, in 2017. He was 91. 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.
The 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was born on this day, August 19, in 1946. By his own account, Clinton was inspired to enter politics after meeting President John F. Kennedy at the White House when Clinton was a high school student.
Karsh had closed his studio in Ottawa in 1992, aged 84, but in 1993 he traveled to the White House to photograph the new president and new First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in 1993. And Clinton installed Karsh’s “Roaring Lion” Churchill portrait when he moved into his new residence.
See the portraits of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and the two together.
Banksy’s Turf War reproduces Karsh’s famous portrait of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill with a slight difference; instead of a bald head, Churchill is painted with a green mohican.
Banksy reimagines Winston Churchill as a punk rocker with a bright green strip of hair resembling a mohawk but also a piece of turf. Painted in Banksy’s typical black and white stencil style on a white background, the portrait is monochromatic, like Karsh’s original photograph, apart from the green strip of hair. Churchill shows the same determined smile and ferocious look as in Karsh’s photograph, which earned him the nicknames ‘the British bulldog’ and ‘the roaring lion’ and which perfectly reflect his famous words ‘We shall never surrender’. MyArtBroker
On August 15, in 1947, India and Pakistan gained their independence after 200 years of British rule.
Karsh photographed India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1956 while Nehru was still in office. He photographed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during Bhutto’s tenure as the ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan, and he would go on to photograph his daughter Benazir Bhutto, the 11th and 13th Prime Minister of Pakistan, in 1989.
Strikes that took place in Poland on August 14, 1980, would lead to Solidarność.
With his history of organizing workers to strike against the government, another rise in food prices led to a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk. It inspired other similar strikes in Gdańsk, which then spread across Poland, and ultimately led to Walesa being chosen as chairman of the National Coordinating Committee of the Solidarność (Solidarity) Free Trade Union. Read more (Wikipedia)
Lech Walesa was photographed by Yousuf Karsh in 1989, at Government House in Ottawa.