Fulton Sheen was an American bishop (later archbishop) of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. Sheen worked on three books with Yousuf Karsh: This is the Holy Land, and This is Rome (1959); and These Are The Sacraments (1962).

We recently worked with the The Archbishop Sheen Spiritual Center in Peoria, Illinois, on a search for this photograph. Our colleagues at the Library and Archives of Canada dug deep and found us this image from This is the Holy Land.

The Bishop can be seen in this wedding photograph of Yousuf Karsh and Estrellita in 1962.

See more Fulton Sheen.

Fidel Castro was born on this day, August 13, in 1926. In “Regarding Heroes,” (Godine, 2009) Karsh shares the story of his 1971 visit with the communist revolutionary.

At the end of our host’s tour of the facilities, we inspected two or three possible places for photography. I chose a simple ceremonial room with a few bookshelves and walls so stark as to suggest a barracks. It turned out to be Castro’s own office. I set up my equipment and went home to the Canadian Embassy, where I was staying as a guest of the ambassador, Kenneth Brown. And then I waited to learn when Castro would see me. Days passed. They were pleasant enough: the weather was wonderful, and I was free to explore where I wished… But planes then left Cuba only once a week, and my time for departure was fast approaching. On the last day, I phoned the Protocol Office every hour: when would the prime minister be free? My frustration was not eased by the embassy phone, which periodically went out of order.

Not until after six o’clock, the last evening, did word come that two cars were on their way to fetch me. Castro arrived in the room we had chosen, quietly, graciously, but looking grave and tired. He was taller than he appeared in photographs. He shook my hand and immediately removed the belt and pistol that were part of his uniform. Then he apologized for keeping me waiting so long; he had had many guests and duties during the previous days of anniversary celebrations. As I readied the camera, I suggested that, to start, he might try to recapture the moods of our first moments together. “I’m sorry, I cannot,” he replied charmingly. “I am not a good enough actor. I cannot play myself.”

Our session lasted three-and-a-half hours. From time to time we would stop to refresh ourselves with Cuban rum and Coke. “Tell me,” he said, “about photographing Helen Keller.” Then he asked about Shaw, Churchill, Camus, Cocteau, and mostly about Hemingway, whose home near Havana is a shrine. I was impressed that Castro – a revolutionary – should have made room in his life for these creative luminaries.

See some magazine covers that featured Karsh in their obituaries of Castro.

The Woodstock Music & Art Fair kicked off today, August 15, in 1969. Karsh photographed two musical artists who performed that famous weekend: Ravi Shankar and Joan Baez. Ravi Shankar was on from 10-10:35 pm and played through the rain. Joan Baez played later the same night, while six months pregnant.

Australian Women’s Weekly is celebrating its 85th anniversary with this souvenir edition featuring one of Yousuf Karsh’s portraits of Her Majesty as the full cover. The popular portrait was made in 1951 when Elizabeth was still Princess. Women’s Weekly has published many covers of the Royal family beginning with the first Weekly issue in June 1933, which featured a young Princess Elizabeth and her grandmother Queen Mary. You can see all of their past Royal covers here.

Our colleagues at the National Library of Medicine have this photograph of Victor McKusick in their archives, and recently referred The Jackson Laboratory to us to discuss the Lab’s use of the image as a poster to promote next year’s Maine State Science Fair. A copy of the poster will be sent to every high school in Maine.

Dr. Victor McKusick was an American internist and medical geneticist, and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He was a proponent of the mapping of the human genome due to its use for studying congenital diseases. He was photographed by Karsh during his tenure at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Here’s what Jackson Lab told us:

The Maine State Science Fair is a state-wide STEM research exposition and competition, affiliated with the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Over 300 Maine students attend the MSSF to present their projects in life sciences, engineering, computer sciences, environmental sciences, and other STEM fields. The MSSF awards over $1 million in college tuition scholarships and provides a venue for students to share their love of science.

It is our hope that Maine high school students will view the poster and will learn about a scientist important to the field of medical genetics and from their home state of Maine.

The Jackson Laboratory, founded in 1929, is an independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center, a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. Learn more about them.

On this day, July 30, in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law in the United States to provide health insurance to people age 65 and older, regardless of income or medical history.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower held the first White House Conference on Aging in January 1961, in which creating a health care program for social security beneficiaries was proposed. Its first beneficiary was former President Harry Truman. Read more.

 

On this day, July 26, in 1775, the United States postal system was established. Benjamin Franklin was its first postmaster general.

Dr. Melvin Calvin featured as one of four scientists honored with a U.S. Postal Service stamp, in 2011. The Karsh portrait of Dr. Calvin features in the background. Karsh photographed Arthur Summerfield, 54th Postmaster General of the United States, in 1953. Summerfield served under Dwight D. Eisenhower, from 1953 to 1961.

Netflix series The Crown is proving to be one of the most successful and most “binge-watched” series of all time. The series is intended to last 60 episodes over six seasons, with 10 one-hour episodes per season, covering Elizabeth’s life from her younger years to her reign, and with new actors being cast every two seasons.

Naturally, Mr. Karsh photographed many of the people who are portrayed in the show. Aside from Churchill, here are some of the other prominent figures.

Learn more about the Royal Sittings.

On this day, July 18, in 1918, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born. The anti-apartheid revolutionary and political leader was photographed by Karsh in June, 1990, just four months after Mandela’s release from prison. Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada at the time, greeted Mandela at the airport and accompanied him to the Chateau Laurier for his portrait. Read what happened.

Edward Durell Stone was a twentieth century American architect. He designed buildings throughout the world. Among his notable works are Radio City Music Hall and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, and the United States Embassy in New Delhi, India.

Palo Alto City Library is currently holding a small photographic exhibit on the work of Mr. Stone, and included this Karsh portrait. The exhibition is on through the end of August, 2018.

Dr. Hans Selye was a pioneering Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist known for demonstrating the existence of biological stress and indeed coining the term “stress”. Hungarian journalist Zsuzsanna Balázs contacted us about her article on Dr. Selye. She mentions that Selye “later thought that if he knew better English, he would probably have used “strain.””

Read the whole article (translate from Hungarian).

In 1968 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada – as was Mr. Karsh, in 1990. Dr. Selye was photographed twice, in 1953 and 1973.

The “American Portraits” exhibition is currently at the Dayton Art Museum. We heard from a local who was involved in a scavenger hunt around various exhibits at the museum, asking if we could help with the answer to the question “At what university was Karsh a visiting professor until 1969?” Mrs. Karsh told us that it was Ohio University in Athens. Other questions included:

Who headed the United Mine Workers of America?  Who designed Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel in 1922?  Who starred in “The Emperor Jones”?

Drop us a line if you have an interesting Karsh story!

Emails telling us Karsh stories are always welcome, and we recently heard from a one-time medical student at Johns Hopkins. The gentleman said he happened to be present the day the portrait of Dr. Taussig was taken, and shared his memories. He also shared an article by Lisa S. Rotenstein, M.D., M.B.A., and Anupam B. Jena, M.D., Ph.D. that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Lost Taussigs: The Consequences of Gender Discrimination in Medicine” is about gender-based harassment and discrimination in the medical industry.

“Medicine has not been immune to the problems of gender-based harassment and discrimination that have surfaced in other industries, despite efforts in recent decades to increase the field’s diversity and inclusiveness. Aside from the obvious moral issues associated with mistreatment of and job discrimination against women physicians, we believe that greater focus is needed on the potential consequences for patients and biomedical science of the loss of talent and worse outcomes that result when women in medicine are slighted, overlooked, or explicitly wronged.

“In the 1940s, Dr. Helen Taussig developed the Blalock–Taussig shunt for congenital cyanotic heart disease, creating a life-extending solution for a condition previously thought to be untreatable. Widely considered the founder of pediatric cardiology and a devoted clinician, she won both the Lasker Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Since that time, how many Helen Taussigs have we lost to discrimination, harassment, and marginalization? And how many more will we lose if things don’t change?”

Read the whole article.

See more about Dr. Taussig.

Moscow, 29 June 2018. On the occasion of Canada Day 2018, the Embassy of Canada in Moscow was honoured to celebrate the enduring cultural legacies of internationally renowned Canadian portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002) and legendary Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982).

At a special reception held in the presence of the diplomatic corps, the Ambassador of Canada to the Russian Federation officially unveiled an original portrait of Glenn Gould taken by Yousuf Karsh in 1957 which has been gifted to the Embassy of Canada by the Estate of Yousuf Karsh.  Glenn Gould visited the Embassy in 1957 during his historic concert tour of the Soviet Union, as did Yousuf Karsh subsequently in 1963 to photograph prominent Soviet political and cultural figures of the day.  During the reception, the 50th anniversary of the initial investiture of Yousuf Karsh into the Order of Canada on 26 April 1968 was also marked.  For the Embassy of Canada in Moscow, it was a unique opportunity to honour two towering Canadian cultural icons who proudly shared their talent and creativity with the Russian people.

See more Khrushchevs.

On June 23, 2018, the Dayton Art Institute unveiled “Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits,” on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

About the Exhibition:
During a career that spanned six decades, photographer Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002) created iconic portraits of many of the 20th century’s most influential men and women – from fields as diverse as business, medicine, entertainment, politics, and the arts. Karsh photographed countless international figures, but his images of Americans are counted among his finest portraits. This exhibition features 48 black-and-white photographs from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.

Featured portraits include writer Ernest Hemingway; artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Andy Warhol; actors Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart; athletes Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson; business leaders Elizabeth Arden and Warren Buffett; architects Frank Lloyd Wright and I. M. Pei; first ladies Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Eleanor Roosevelt; and entertainment giants Walt Disney and Jim Henson, as well as many others.

The exhibition runs through September 16, 2018. Read more.

India’s Better Photography is the leading photography magazine in India and South Asia. Past issues have included articles about Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Alan Harvey, Cecil Beaton, Gordon Parks, Jane Evelyn Atwood, David Zimmerman, Helmut Newton, and Saul Leiter. June 2018’s issue features the work of Yousuf Karsh. In her in-depth article, Conchita Fernandes writes:

…how did he go about encapsulating his larger-than-life subjects in a photograph? What did he look for? And in the case of some of them, how did he maneuver around their daunting personalities? One example of this was the iconic photograph that he made of Winston Churchill, in 1941. Imagine plucking a cigar out of the mouth of an ill-disposed Churchill, who at the time had gained a kind of mythical status for this authoritative and robust approach in politics. “It’s a story that has been dramatised by the press a great deal… I photographed Churchill three times, twice after that occasion. It was a spontaneous act on my part. It was intuitive. It’s unthinkable that I would plan such a thing beforehand. It was similar to picking a piece of thread off your shirt. It was done with respect and appreciation. But he responded. His expression, although not planned on my part, fit the need of the hour. He represented the great British determination,” Karsh had said of the image. In response to the picture taken of him, Churchill had said to Karsh, “You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed.” That was how far Karsh went to get the picture he wanted. But it was always done with grace and politeness. “I would stand and smile and bow through all the points of the compass… Perhaps it was the only thing I could do really well, and which people could understand.” He always looked for positive values in his sitters, even if they were not known for them. So his subjects trusted him, and revealed a part of their inner selves that very few photographers have managed to do since then.

Read the entire piece.

The Rapho photographic agency was founded in Paris in 1933 by Charles Rado (1899–1970), a Hungarian immigrant. Rapho, an acronym formed from Rado-Photo, is one of the oldest press agencies specializing in humanist photography. Rapho initially represented the small group of Hungarian friends and refugee photographers Brassaï, Nora Dumas, Ergy Landau and Ylla.

Forced to close the agency during World War II, Rado left for the U.S. in 1940. He opened a New York City office at 59 East 54th Street, Rapho Guillumette Pictures, with photographer Paul Guillumette. Rapho was reopened in Paris in 1946 by Raymond Grosset.

Rado and Grosset proceeded to gather a number of photographers whom they represented in varying capacities and sometimes shared, including: Robert Doisneau, Édouard Boubat, Denis Brihat, Bill Brandt, Ken Heyman, Izis, André Kertész, Yousuf Karsh, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Janine Niépce, Willy Ronis, and Sabine Weiss. (Wikipedia)

A relative of Raymond Grosset has been in touch – a new film for French television is being written about animal portraitist Ylla, and this portrait of Rado will be included.

Joan E. Howard is the director of Petite Plaisance, the former home of Marguerite Yourcenar and Grace Frick, and is the author of From Violence to Vision: Sacrifice in the Works of Marguerite Yourcenar. Available now in hardcover and digital download from University of Missouri Press is Howard’s latest book, “We Met in Paris” Grace Frick and Her Life with Marguerite Yourcenar.

Grace Frick introduced English-language readers all over the world to the distinguished French author Marguerite Yourcenar with her award-winning translation of Yourcenar’s novel Memoirs of Hadrian in 1954. European biographies of Yourcenar have often disparaged Frick and her relationship with Yourcenar, however. This work shows Frick as a person of substance in her own right, and paints a portrait of both women that is at once intimate and scrupulously documented. It contains a great deal of new information that will disrupt long-held beliefs about Yourcenar and may even shock some of her scholars and fans.

See more Marguerite Yourcenar by Yousuf Karsh.

From June 8 to September 12, 2018, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents the work of the Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) – the first major museum exhibition in the United States in more than 15 years dedicated to the Swiss-born artist. Installed within the museum’s rotunda, Giacometti examines this preeminent modernist who is renowned for the distinctive figurative sculptures that he produced in reaction to the trauma and anguish of World War II, including a series of elongated standing women, striding men, and expressive bust-length portraits. The exhibition encompasses the entirety of the artist’s career, featuring nearly 200 sculptures, paintings, and drawings, some of which have never before been shown in the United States, as well as archival photographs and ephemera.

Read Jason Farago’s review in the New York Times.

Read the Guggenheim press release.

Alberto Giacometti in his Paris studio.

“Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms” opened at the New-York Historical Society this week and is the first internationally touring exhibition devoted to Rockwell’s iconic depictions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. This 1956 portrait by Karsh hangs at the very start of the exhibition.

The traveling exhibition, which was organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, explores how Rockwell’s 1943 paintings – Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want – gave visual voice to Roosevelt’s call to the defense of freedom worldwide and took their place among the most enduring images in the history of American art. In addition to Rockwell’s Four Freedoms, the exhibition encompasses numerous other examples of painting, illustration, and more, by both Rockwell and a broad range of his contemporaries, as well as historical documents, photographs, videos, artifacts, and interactive digital displays, all on the theme of the Four Freedoms, from FDR’s initial enunciation of them as a reason to enter the War to their powerful post-war legacy.

Following New-York Historical, the exhibition travels to The Henry Ford, Dearborn, MI; The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.; Mémorial de Caen, Normandy, France; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX ; and the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA. Read more on New-York Historical Society website.

See another Rockwell portrait.

See Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

On this day, May 25, in 1977, the film Star Wars was released in American movie theaters. The film would go on to win seven Oscars and make household names of the cast. Carrie Fisher was photographed by Karsh a couple of years later in 1979, for “Twentieth Century Film Corp.”

The Estate recently learned of the passing of Dean William Schwartz, of Boston University School of Law. Dean Schwartz served as professor of law at the school for more than 30 years. He led BU Law as dean from 1980 to 1988, during which period he was photographed by Karsh.

This photograph will be used in a memorial celebration taking place in Boston this month.

Read more about Dean Schwartz on the Boston University website.

Douglas Cardinal is a Canadian architect based in Ottawa, Canada. He is still practicing, and his firm was recently in touch about using a portrait.

Cardinal was born in Calgary, Alberta, of Métis, Blackfoot/Kainai, German and Algonquin heritage and is “famous for flowing architecture marked with smooth curvilinear forms and influenced by his Aboriginal heritage as well as European Expressionist architecture.” (Wikipedia)

In this photograph he stands with a rendering of the “New National Museum of Man” (1984), which was renamed the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 1986.

See another Karsh portrait of Douglas Cardinal.

American author, journalist, and “unabashed contrarian” Tom Wolfe has died, aged 88.

“Wolfe adopted wearing a white suit as a trademark in 1962. He bought his first white suit, planning to wear it in the summer, in the style of Southern gentlemen. He found that the suit he purchased was too heavy for summer use, so he wore it in winter, which created a sensation. At the time, white suits were supposed to be reserved for summer wear. Wolfe maintained this as a trademark. He sometimes accompanied it with a white tie, white homburg hat, and two-tone shoes.” (Wikipedia)

Wolfe was photographed late in Karsh’s career, in 1990, one of several people photographed for a project titled “American Legends.” See the other people who were photographed.

On this day, May 12, in 1937, George VI was crowned King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth.

In 1939, King George became the first British monarch to visit America and Canada. From Ottawa, they were accompanied throughout by Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, to present themselves in North America as King and Queen of Canada. George was the first reigning monarch of Canada to visit North America, although he had been to Canada previously as Prince Albert and as Duke of York. Both Governor General of Canada Lord Tweedsmuir and Mackenzie King hoped that the King’s presence in Canada would demonstrate the principles of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which gave full sovereignty to the British Dominions. (Read more in Wikipedia.)

George came to the throne after King Edward VIII abdicated to marry his mistress, Wallis Simpson. See their Karsh portrait.

On this day, May 10, in 1994, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was sworn in as the first black president of South Africa.

Mandela visited Canada three times, and it was on his first visit, in June of 1990, that he was photographed by Karsh, at the Chateau Laurier. Read about the Sitting.

According to the CBC, Mandela addressed a joint session of the House of Commons and the Senate in Ottawa and spoke at the Ontario legislature in Toronto.

“During his three-day visit, he also spoke to crowds in Toronto and Montreal. In a square behind Montreal City Hall, he told 20,000 people that “the catalogue of crimes committed by the apartheid system continues to grow.”

Four years after that visit, not only did Mandela vote for the first time, he was elected democratic South Africa’s first president.”

When Nelson Mandela died, at the end of 2013, the Estate was proud to work with Apple on their full page obituary. Read about it.

Yugoslav communist revolutionary and political leader, Josip Broz, died on this day, May 4, in 1980.

“Viewed as a unifying symbol, his internal policies maintained the peaceful coexistence of the nations of the Yugoslav federation. He gained further international attention as the chief leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, alongside Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.

“As the Communist Party was outlawed in Yugoslavia starting on 30 December 1920, Josip Broz took on many assumed names during his activity within the Party, including ‘Rudi’, ‘Walter’, and ‘Tito.'” (Read more: Wikipedia).

See more Karsh photographs of Tito.

On this day, April 26, in 1954, Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine began field trials.

“The polio vaccine field trials of 1954, sponsored by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (March of Dimes), are among the largest and most publicized clinical trials ever undertaken. Across the United States, 623 972 schoolchildren were injected with vaccine or placebo, and more than a million others participated as “observed” controls. The results, announced in 1955, showed good statistical evidence that Jonas Salk’s killed virus preparation was 80-90% effective in preventing paralytic poliomyelitis.” – National Institutes of Health.

President Franklin Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio in 1921 at the age of 39 and was left paralyzed from the waist down. He helped found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, in 1938.

Karsh photographed Jonas Salk in 1956 and 1991. See more.

“Tennessee Williams – Playwright & Painter” is an exhibition featuring nine of Tennessee William’s paintings dating from the 1970s. The show runs from May 2 – October 7, 2018, at the Jewish Museum of Florida, Miami Beach. Hanging in the gallery is an enlargement of this iconic photograph of Williams, made by Karsh in 1956.

Karsh recalls in Portraits of Greatness (1959): 

Tennessee William’s reply to my desire to photograph him was enthusiastic and spontaneous, like his plays. We met in his small New York apartment in 1956 and decided that the portrait should be made in his own environment, and I came to realize that his jovial, homespun man contained a tumultuous talent and a soul seldom at peace.

Superficially, the plot for this sitting – a sort of minor play rather on the comic side, with Mr. Williams as the comedian and the photographer as his foil – was quite perfect. I had found the master in the scene of his work, surrounded by his typewriter, his manuscript, and his ever present glass of Scotch. Moreover, he seemed to be surrounded by invisible friends. His telephone was constantly ringing as if for the deliberate purpose of distracting me. His obvious desire to co-operate with me and the feigned calm I can sometimes command in a pinch enabled us, however, to deal with invisible friends – and some visible ones – and to get on with the portrait.

… At last the portrait was done and when I showed it to some of my friends they remarked that it looked exactly like Williams’ plays. Perhaps. At any rate, the playwright’s deceptive ease of manner, his informal speech, and carefree air reminded me of various characters made by his pen – ordinary-looking men hiding an unsuspected fury which invariably erupts on the stage, often in tragedy… I hope this portrait catches at least a spark of that volcanic inward fire which makes each of his plays a sort of spiritual convulsion and leaves the audience limp with spent emotion.

93 year old President James Carter was unable to attend the funeral of First Lady Barbara Bush last week, because he and his wife, Rosalynn, were traveling. In attendance were Presidents Bush Sr. and Jr., President Clinton, and President Obama.

2018 marks the centenary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. Karsh said of their time together:

His exquisite impromptu piano reveries – poetic islands of peace – punctuated the tension of a highly charged photographic session.

Karsh images will be seen in an upcoming book on Bernstein and in many of the other events going on around this centenary – around 2000 all together!

See more Leonard Bernstein by Karsh.

Canada Post’s latest stamp features a portrait of then-Princess Elizabeth months before her accession to the throne. The image is part of a series of famous pictures taken by renowned Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1951.

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Julie Payette, Governor General of Canada, along with Jessica L. McDonald, Chair of the Board of Directors and Interim President and CEO of Canada Post, unveiled the stamp during a ceremony at Rideau Hall.

At 25, Elizabeth became Queen when her father, King George VI, died in the winter of 1952. Her coronation was delayed to allow for an appropriate mourning period. The coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953. Three million people lined the streets of London along the procession route. Canadians celebrated with fireworks, parades and horse races; and the Governor General issued a silver spoon to each Canadian child born on coronation day. Read more.

Stamps are on sale now!

See more Karsh photographs of Elizabeth.

Sad news from The Palace that the Queen’s last remaining corgi, Willow, has passed on. Her Majesty has been surrounded by corgis during her entire reign, and they did not always have the greatest reputation for friendliness. However, they were fond of Prince Harry’s new fiancée – this from an interview with the BBC last year:

“The corgis took to you straight away,” Harry said of Markle’s first meeting with the pups. “I’ve spent the last 33 years being barked at. This one walks in, absolutely nothing.”

“Just laying on my feet during tea – it was very sweet,” Markle said.

“Just wagging tails,” Harry said, moving his hand back and forth. “And I was just like, ‘Argh!’ ”

According to the Washington Post, her majesty still has two “dorgis” for company. Read the article.

See more Karsh images of Her Royal Highness.

On this day, April 18, in 1956, American actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco.

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.

My portrait of the royal couple in cameo profile taken that same day would later be used as the official photograph and stamp of Monaco.

See portraits of Princess Grace.

Our friend and colleague Julia Van Haaften, founding curator of the New York Public Library’s photography collection, has released her in-depth biography Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography.

This Karsh photograph above was made at Abbott’s home in Maine in 1989, two years before she died. Friends since their first meeting at the International Center of Photography in 1981, where they were introduced by Cornell Capa, Mr. Karsh spoke at her funeral and you can listen to the wonderful audio here.

From the review by Dwight Garner in the April 9, 2018, issue of the New York Times: “Abbott was a chain-smoker, a big drinker at times, and she liked to dance. She and Man Ray were kicked off one dance floor for “obscenity,” Van Haaften writes, which is one definition of pretty good dancing. When Man Ray needed a divorce, and the only ground New York State would accept was adultery, Abbott agreed to be named as the other woman.”

“When a male supervisor told Abbott that “nice girls” don’t go to the Bowery, she replied: “Buddy, I’m not a nice girl. I’m a photographer … I go anywhere.””

“With her bobbed hair, no-nonsense mien and tendency to wear trousers – this at a time when doing so got a woman hassled on the street – Abbott was an eyeful. Throughout her life, photographers and painters competed to capture her image; Isamu Noguchi made a sculpture of her in 1929.”

Read the book review in the Times.

Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography is out now from WW Norton.

Having debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017, director Stanley Tucci’s biopic of Alberto Giacometti, “Final Portrait,” is now on wide release. The film stars Geoffrey Rush in the title role.

In other news, Giacometti’s studio is “returning to Montparnasse in Paris, more than half a century after the Swiss artist died and left the tiny space packed with sculptures and drawings. His original studio at rue Hippolyte-Maindron no longer exists, but the Giacometti Fondation is painstakingly recreating the space as he left it in 1966 as the centerpiece of the new Giacometti Institute, which is due to open on June 21 in an historic building in the same neighborhood.” (Artnet)