The producer and theatre owner Sir Cameron Mackintosh has announced that he is planning to rename the Queen’s Theatre in London’s West End as the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. Sondheim, 89, will be the only living artist to have a theatre named in his honor both in London’s West End and on Broadway in New York, where the former Henry Miller’s theatre was named after him in 2010.

Karsh wrote in his book American Legends (1992, Bulfinch Press): “It did not surprise me to learn that he loves intricate games and puzzles. They mirror the subtle complexity of his mind – and his inherent sense of fun.”

See more Sondheim.

The Spy Museum, in Washington, DC, is the only public museum in the United States solely dedicated to espionage and the only one in the world to provide a global perspective on an all-but-invisible profession.

We worked closely with the museum’s designers on the Cuban Missile Crisis mural, which features a profile image of John F. Kennedy by Yousuf Karsh. The mural is in the Analysis exhibit, and explores how leaders use intelligence. A special scan was made in order to allow for a huge installation of the image.

On this day, July 2, in 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. The law ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.

Karsh photographed Johnson in 1963, during his term as 36th president of the United States. See more Lyndon Johnson by Karsh.

A singular look into Grace of Monaco’s stylish life through the exceptional dresses that the house of Dior created for her over the years. The book cover is a Karsh portrait from 1956.

Grace Kelly’s life may have transformed from that of a Hollywood star to Princess of Monaco, but her status as a style icon remained constant throughout her life. There is perhaps no better record of this than her close thirty-year-long relationship with the illustrious house of Dior.

Published on the occasion of the 2019 exhibition at the Musée Christian Dior in Granville, France, this sophisticated illustrated volume celebrates the close collaboration between Grace Kelly and the artistic directors of Dior throughout the years, from Christian Dior, to her support of Yves Saint Laurent, and her close friendship with Marc Bohan. An in-depth overview of this special exhibition, this new title explores the evolving relationship between Dior’s designers and their muse through insights from experts on Dior and Monaco’s royals – including an intimate interview with Princess Grace’s favorite couturier and close friend, Marc Bohan – and beautiful images from Dior’s archives as well as an exclusive photoshoot in Monaco. Fashion-loving readers will be delighted to rediscover the classic elegance of Grace Kelly’s wardrobe through the gorgeous designs created for her by Dior.

Grace of Monaco: Princess in Dior” is out now from Rizzoli. Foreword by Bernard Arnault and Prince Albert II of Monaco.

The Charter of the United Nations was signed on June 26, 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, and came into force on 24 October 1945. Yousuf Karsh was sent there by LIFE to photograph the delegates, including Anthony Eden, British Foreign Secretary at the time; His Royal Highness Ibn Abdul Aziz Faisal, Viceroy of the Hejaz and Minister of Foreign Affairs for Saudi Arabia; and Vyacheslav Molotov, USSR People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

This frame of Mr. Molotov is new to our digital archives. We are scanning weekly!

American graphic designer Milton Glaser was born on this day, June 26, in 1929. He is most well known for the logo “I Love New York”: I ❤ NY. Among other achievements he also co-founded New York Magazine, and was the first graphic designer to be given the National Medal of the Arts award from President Barack Obama in 2009.

Glaser is one of many subjects who were photographed by Karsh in 1990 and 1991 for his “American Legends” project, among them Ralph Nadar, Dizzy Gillespie, Tom Wolfe, and Gordon Parks. See the others.

On June 24, in 1901, Pablo Picasso had his first exhibition in Paris, “Yo Picasso” (I Picasso), at the Galerie Vollard.

Karsh photographed Picasso in 1954 at Picasso’s Villa La Galloise. Karsh wrote of the sitting: “‘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.”

See more photographs from this sitting.

Benazir Bhutto was born on this day, June 21, in 1953. She served as Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996 and was the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim majority nation. She was photographed by Karsh on a visit to Washington, D.C. in 1989.

Karsh also photographed Benazir’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1976 as Pakistani PM.

A model walked the runway with a headpiece adorned with images of Elizabeth II by Yousuf Karsh during the pushBUTTON fashion show at London Fashion Week, February 2019. Photo © Gareth Gay, courtesy of Camera Press.

See the original photograph of Princess Elizabeth, in 1951, and photographs of her as Queen.

Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor Igor Stravinsky was born on this day, June 17, in 1882.

Stravinsky first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Serge Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). The latter transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky’s enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. By the time he was photographed by Karsh, in 1956, he was firmly in his “serial period.” Read more (Wikipedia)

In Portraits of Greatness (1959, University of Toronto Press) Karsh wrote:

It has been said by his good friend Aldous Huxley that Igor Stravinsky is one of those happy intellectual amphibians who seem to be at home on the dry land of words or in the ocean of music… He entertained my wife and myself in California, in 1956, with a one-man symphony of conversation, witty and wise.

President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court on this day, in 1967. On August 30, 1967, after a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall’s nomination by a vote of 69 to 11. Two days later, he was sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren, making him the first African American in history to sit on America’s highest court. Johnson said that this was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.”

See the Lyndon Johnson Sittings.

Anthony Eden was born on this day, June 12, in 1897. He became Prime Minister of Great Britain after Winston Churchill‘s resignation in 1955.

Karsh photographed The Right Honorable Anthony Eden as British Foreign Secretary in 1943 with Canada’s Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King. Eden sat again for LIFE magazine in 1945, and once more in 1949 when he was leader of the opposition for the Conservative Party.

See more about the Sittings.

Jacques Cousteau was born on this day, June 11, in 1910. Cousteau was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. Karsh photographed Cousteau and his two sons, Jean-Michel and Philippe, in January, 1972. Jacques Cousteau died aged 87, and his legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation.

On this day, May 29, in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Nepali Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first recorded climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Hillary climbed ten other peaks in the Himalayas on further visits in 1956, 1960–1961, and 1963–1965, managing to find time for a sitting with Yousuf Karsh in Chicago in January, 1960.

Several decades later and one of Karsh’s portraits of Sir Edmund featured on this limited edition packet of Grape Nuts cereal.

See another portrait of Edmund Hillary.

The Art Gallery of Windsor’s summer exhibition features 20 artists from the Permanent Collection, showcasing 73 works.

Artists from the 1940s to present day explore aspects of the region through diverse media representing the cultural communities of London, Windsor, Chatham, and Detroit. A wide variety of painting, photography, sculpture and graphic arts are on view. The exhibition features modern and contemporary art spanning eight decades, including some never-before-seen acquisitions.

The exhibition also features a very special donation by the Ford Motor Company of Canada including 25 works from renowned artist Yousuf Karsh – including the above photo of Gow Crapper, misleading with his leading man good looks.

“Portrait of the Region” runs from May 31 to September 29, 2019. On Saturday June 1, join curators and artists Cassandra Getty, Brenda Francis Pelkey and Ron Benner and explore the role photography plays in interpreting ideas of place.

Read more.

Herman Wouk was an American author best known for historical fiction such as The Caine Mutiny (1951) which won the Pulitzer Prize, and The Winds of War (1971) which became a hugely successful miniseries. Wouk was photographed by Karsh in 1980, the year that Wouk won the Alexander Hamilton Medal from the Institute for Public Relations.

See some other Pulitzer Prize winners who were photographed by Karsh.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in “Brown v. Board of Education”, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional.

“Chief Justice Earl Warren, nominated to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower, echoed Douglas’s concerns in a 1954 speech to the American Bar Association, proclaiming that “Our American system like all others is on trial both at home and abroad, …the extent to which we maintain the spirit of our constitution with its Bill of Rights, will in the long run do more to make it both secure and the object of adulation than the number of hydrogen bombs we stockpile.”” (Wikipedia)

Ieoh Ming “I. M.” Pei has died.

“Buildings are for people to enjoy,” the Chinese-American architect told (Karsh). The appreciative millions who throng through his creative public buildings – the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Kennedy Library and the addition to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Fragrant Hill Hotel outside Peking, or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland – respond instinctively to I. M.’s “dedication to humanity through architecture.”

See more.

Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan by Buchan’s granddaughter, Ursula Buchan, is out now from Bloomsbury UK. This extensive biography tells how although Buchan was mainly known for The Thirty-Nine Steps he in fact wrote about a hundred books. He was a “Scholar, antiquarian, barrister, colonial administrator, journal editor, war correspondent, director or war time propaganda, and member of parliament.”

This portrait is captioned in the book “JB, characteristically neatly turned out, was photographed many times in Ottawa by Yousuf Karsh. This was his favourite picture.”

He and Mr. Karsh had an enduring friendship – read more about them.

Learn more about their many sittings.

Buy the book.

Harry S. Truman was born on this day, May 9, in 1884. He was the 33rd president of the United States, from 1945 to 1953, having served four months as Vice President before Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office.

Karsh photographed him as Senator Harry S. Truman, Missouri, for LIFE Magazine in 1944, and again in 1948 as President, for Collier’s.

Edwin Herbert Land was born on this day, May 7, in 1909. He is best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of color vision, among other things. His Polaroid instant camera went on sale in late 1948 and made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.

In the early years of the Cold War, Land played a major role in the development of photographic reconnaissance and intelligence gathering efforts.

In his laboratory he built giant studio cameras the size of bedroom closets that produced large format, 20 x 24 inch, prints. He gave photographers free access to these cameras in return for some of the prints they produced. Read more (Wikipedia).

 

It’s a boy! Their royal highnesses Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, announced the birth of their baby today, May 6, 2019. He is seventh in line to the throne.

Prince Harry is just three years old in this fun group portrait from 1987, made at Balmoral Castle. See more British Royals by Karsh.

J. Edgar Hoover died on this day, May 2, in 1972. He was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. He was appointed as the director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI’s predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77.

Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He was found to have exceeded the jurisdiction of the FBI, and to have used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others, even sitting presidents of the United States. Read more (Wikipedia)

Karsh photographed Hoover in 1944 on assignment for LIFE magazine. See other people who sat for Karsh and LIFE.

Taking his place on a banner at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., representing the University’s core value of Justice.

Other core values: Learning, Integrity, Goodness, Community, and Service.

Established in 1851, NDNU is the third oldest college in California. It is a Catholic, not-for-profit, coeducational university, located on the San Francisco peninsula in Silicon Valley. With more than 1,700 students from 32 states and 28 different countries, NDNU exposes students to broad interests and perspectives through others with diverse backgrounds.

See more Martin Luther King by Karsh.

The 1939 New York World’s Fair opened on this day, April 30. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people attended its exhibits in two seasons. It was the first exposition to be based on the future, with an opening slogan of “Dawn of a New Day”, and it allowed all visitors to take a look at “the world of tomorrow”.

Albert Einstein gave a speech, and his writings were included, along with Thomas Mann‘s, in a time capsule. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his work for harp and string orchestra “Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus” on commission. David Sarnoff, then president of RCA, chose to introduce television to the mass public at the RCA pavilion.  Read more (Wikipedia)

Conductor Zubin Mehta was born on this day, April 29, in 1936, in Bombay (Mumbai). He is currently music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 1978, Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991, becoming the longest holder of the post.

See a list of the many conductors who were photographed by Karsh.

New York’s notorious nightclub, Studio 54, opened on this day, April 26, in 1977. Rudolph Nureyev was a regular at the club. He was photographed by Karsh in July of ’77 in Montreal, when Nureyev appeared with the National Ballet of Canada at Place des Arts.

“The crowd outside 254 West 54th Street in New York City on this day in 1927 would have been waiting for the curtain of a Puccini opera. On this day in 1957 or ’67, they would have been waiting for a filming of an episode of Password or maybe Captain Kangaroo. On this day in 1977, however, the crowd gathered outside that Midtown address was waiting and hoping for a chance to enter what would soon become the global epicenter of the disco craze and the most famous nightclub in the world: Studio 54, which opened its doors for the very first time on April 26, 1977.” Read more.

See a list of dancers who were photographed by Karsh.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born on this day, April 21, in 1926. She was the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.  When her father died in February 1952, she became head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon.

Karsh photographed King George VI and Princess Elizabeth in 1943, and would return to photograph Her Royal Highness, and her family, on several occasions.  See them here.

American financier, philanthropist, statesman, and political consultant Bernard Baruch coined the term “Cold War” on this day, April 16, in 1947. It had been used by George Orwell in his essay “You and the Atomic Bomb” published in 1945, in the British newspaper Tribune: contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear war, he warned of a “peace that is no peace”, which he called a permanent “cold war”.

Baruch was the first to use it to describe the post-World War II geopolitical tensions between the USSR and its satellites and the United States and its western European allies. Read more (Wikipedia)

Bernard M. Baruch was photographed by Karsh in 1944 as “Special Advisor to Director, Office of War Mobilization”
for LIFE Magazine.

See more Bernard Baruch.

The Christian Dior museum is one of the only “Museums of France” dedicated to a couturier. Every year it holds a thematic exhibition presenting the creations of Christian Dior; 2019 brings “Grace of Monaco, Princess in Dior.” Grace had a particular taste for Dior, and is seen here in a special outfit for her engagement party at the Waldorf Astoria that took place in January 0f 1956, and that she also wore for her Karsh sitting a few months later.

Learn more about the Museum.

See more images of Princess Grace.

On this day, April 12, in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Karsh photographed Gagarin in 1963 on a trip to the USSR that would include photographing a variety of figures, including politicians Brezhnev and Khrushchev, and ballerinas such as Maya Plisetskaya. Karsh would go on to photograph several American astronauts in 1969 including the Apollo XI crew.

“Scout’s honour: A priceless family portrait” reads the headline for an article in The Glengarry News, sent to us by an old friend. Diane Coombs, a former journalist, learned that her grandfather, the late F. E. L. Coombs, had been photographed by Karsh. Ms. Coombs was delighted to find a series of images of her grandfather on the National Library and Archives of Canada’s database. Our colleagues at the Archives are regularly digitizing Karsh’s early sittings.

Frank Edward Lewellyn Coombs was photographed in 1936 when he was working in Ottawa as editor of Scouts Canada publications. A world war veteran, he was editor of the first Canadian Boy magazine in 1921, and founded The Scout Leader, where he served for 25 years. An obituary read: “Few men have made a greater contribution to Canadian Scouting than Frank E. L. Coombs.”

Referring to this portrait, Mrs. Karsh said recently: “Yousuf’s relationships were not only with kings and queens! Everyone was photographed with the same respect, and he was yours 100%.”

Marian Anderson had sung across Europe, to kings and queens, to packed houses, yet in the 1930s she was denied the right to sing in her own country’s capital because she wasn’t white.

Anderson had been denied the right to perform at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her color. Instead, and at the urging of Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes permitted her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial, where, on April 9, 1939, she sang before a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.

Read more about Marian Anderson and the other Karsh Sitters involved in this story.

“Genius draws no color lines” – Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior.

 

Ravi Shankar was born on this day, April 7, in 1920. Karsh photographed Shankar in 1968. One year prior, Shankar had performed a well-received set at the Monterey Pop Festival. While complimentary of the talents of several of the rock artists at the festival, he said he was “horrified” to see Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar on stage. “That was too much for me. In our culture, we have such respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God.” Read more (Wikipedia)

Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, died on this day, April 8, in 2013. She served from 1979 to 1990, making her the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. Thatcher was photographed by Karsh in 1976 at the House of Commons, when she was Leader of the Opposition for the Conservative Party.

Charlton Heston died on this day, April 5, in 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).

“The Ten Commandments” was directed by Cecil B. de Mille and also starred Yul Brynner as Ramesses II.

On this day, April 3, in 1948, President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan, named after General George C. Marshall, Secretary of State, who advocated a significant U.S. economic and political commitment to post-war European recovery.

Karsh photographed General Marshall in 1944 when he was Chief of Staff of the United States Army, and again in 1950, shortly after his tenure as United States Secretary of State. Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.

See Marshall in his 1944 Sitting.  See some other Nobel Prize winners photographed by Karsh.

In 1942, with the strong support of leading aviation executives, the Harvard Business School established the Aviation Research Program to develop vital information and guidance that would benefit the industry’s rapidly accelerating war effort. An HBS advisory committee of industry and government representatives was formed to direct this work under the chairmanship of William A. M. Burden, who had been named Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air in 1943. Harvard Library holds the Burden papers and Harvard University Archives holds this Karsh print of Mr. Burden, who was photographed in 1946. See the Harvard Business School’s Baker Library Archive for more.