Helen Gurley Brown was an American author, publisher, and businesswoman, and was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years from 1965 to 1997. In 1962 she published her book Sex and the Single Girl a non-fiction book written as an advice book that encouraged women to become financially independent and experience sexual relationships before or without marriage. Gurley Brown was one of many photographed for Karsh’s “American Legends” series and book. She was born on this day, February 18, in 1922 (d. 2012).

Charles “Chuck” Jones (1912-2002) was an American animator, painter, voice actor and filmmaker, best known for his work with Warner Bros. Cartoons. He wrote, produced, and/or directed many classic animated cartoon shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Pepé Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, and Porky Pig, among others. Read more (Wikipedia). This portrait is newly added to the website.

The great Leonard Bernstein was photographed by Karsh on this day, February 10, in 1985. Bernstein (1918-1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian and winner of seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and 16 Grammys.

Ronald Reagan was born on this day, February 6, in 1911. After a career in radio and film, Reagan served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989.

Reagan was also photographed by Karsh in 1969 as Governor of the State of California, and in 1980 as President-Elect.

See contact sheets showing Karsh’s visit to the White House to photograph the President in January, 1982.

Norman Mailer was born on this day, January 31, in 1923. Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and political activist.

“I hope you can spend the evening,” was Norman Mailer’s greeting. “I’m planning to cook dinner for you.” That was our gracious introduction to the enfant terrible of American letters, the man whose self-advertised penchant for violent excess had caused more than one qualm as we planned this visit…

Our visit, far from stormy, proved a warm, intimate family occasion. I hope that my portrait has caught both the restlessness and the gentle concern of this creative American, innovative in his art yet so protective when we left that he drove miles ahead of us in his car to make sure we were on the right road.

Excerpt from Karsh Portraits.

Mailer was married six times and had nine children. He fathered eight children by his various wives and informally adopted his sixth wife’s son from another marriage. Apologies for not knowing which of his offspring is featured in this portrait.

Harold “Hal” Prince was an American theatre director and producer known for his work in musical theatre. Prince became associated throughout his career with many of the most noteworthy musicals in Broadway history, including West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Sweeney Todd, and Phantom of the Opera. Over the span of his career, he garnered 21 Tony Awards, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year’s Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards.

Harold Prince was born on this day, January 30, in 1928 (d. 2019).

Newly added to the website we have this portrait of American playwright and screenwriter Robert E. Sherman.

He is the author of Waterloo Bridge, Idiot’s Delight, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, There Shall Be No Night, and The Best Years of Our Lives. He was a screenwriter on the adapted films Rebecca and The Bishop’s Wife. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1936, 1939, 1941), an Academy Award for Best Screenplay (1947) and a Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1948).

His Wikipedia entry has an unusual section:

Comments regarding Sherwood’s height
Sherwood stood 6 feet 8 inches tall. Dorothy Parker, who was 5 feet 4 inches, once commented that when she, Sherwood, and humorist Robert Benchley (6 feet) walked down the street together, they resembled “a walking pipe organ.” When asked at a party how long he had known Sherwood, Benchley stood on a chair, raised his hand to the ceiling, and said “I knew Bob Sherwood back when he was only this tall.”

 

Paul Nitze was an American businessman and government official who, in the 1960s, served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. Nitze was born on this day, January 16, in 1907 (d. 2004).

Joan Baez was born on this day, January 9, in 1941. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums. She was photographed by Karsh in 1970, for Look magazine’s “Under 30” series, and again in 1979 for CBS records.

See more portraits of Joan Baez.

National Science Fiction Day is informally celebrated on January 2nd to honor the birthday of Isaac Asimov. Other sci-fi writers photographed by Karsh include Margaret Atwood, H. G. Wells, and Kurt Vonnegut.

Carter served as 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2002 for his efforts for peace and human rights.

We are thrilled to have this Karsh portrait from 1981 on the cover of TIME‘s January 2025 issue.

Yousuf Karsh was born on this day, December 23, in 1908. During his career he held 15,312 sittings, produced over 370,000 negatives, and left an indelible artistic and historic record of the men and women who shaped the twentieth century. Karsh kept a card file for every sitting, beginning in 1933 and running through to 1993, and the records have been transcribed and are searchable here on this website.

Get a glimpse behind the scenes of his six prolific decades in our Life in Images gallery.

Colonel Harland Sanders was an American businessman and founder of fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken. Karsh photographed him on assignment for KFC in 1972 and ’73. Sanders was born on this day, December 16, in 1980 (b. 1890).

Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. Bunche died on this day, December 9, in 1971 (b. 1903).

He is the first African American and first person of African descent to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He was involved in the formation and administration of the United Nations and played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous peacekeeping operations sponsored by the UN. In 1963, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy. At the UN, Bunche gained such fame that Ebony magazine proclaimed him perhaps the most influential African American of the first half of the 20th century and “[f]or nearly a decade, he was the most celebrated African American of his time both [in the US] and abroad.” See our other Bunche portraits.

Patricia Neal (1926-2010) was an American actress of stage and screen. A major star of the 1950s and 1960s, she was the recipient of an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and two British Academy Film Awards, and was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards. Neal was photographed on this day, December 4, in 1985, for Ogilvy & Mather.

The “Dean of American Composers” Aaron Copland died on this day, December 2, in 1990 (b. 1900). Copland named Igor Stravinsky as his “hero” and his favorite 20th-century composer. Interestingly, Stravinsky was photographed by Karsh on March 20, 1956 whereas Copland was photographed earlier, on February 22, 1956.

Jack Bush was a Canadian abstract painter. Bush (1909-1977) was inspired by Henri Matisse and American abstract expressionist painters such as Helen Frankenthaler. A member of Painters Eleven, his paintings are associated with the Color Field movement and Post-painterly Abstraction. Bush was photographed on this day, November 25, in 1974, and his portrait was included in the recently-published Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné – he stands in front of his 1974 painting “Opus 1/2”.

Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, inventor, teacher, and environmental activist Margaret Atwood was born on this day, November 18, in 1939. 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 1986, the Tampa Museum of Art acquired the prominent collection of antiquities of Mr. Joseph Veach Noble.
“…the Tampa Museum of Art acquired some 175 ancient objects from the eminent collection of Joseph Veach Noble (1920-2007). This acquisition became the cornerstone of the museum’s burgeoning permanent collection of antiquities that has since grown to about 875 objects (and counting). After nearly four decades, it is high time to place the Noble collection in the spotlight once more.” Joseph Veach Noble: Through the Eye of a Collector is on view now through February 19, 2026.

In 1987, Mr. Noble was photographed by Yousuf Karsh. The Museum owns the vase that he holds in the Karsh portrait. In fact, Noble was photographed on three occasions: 1965 and 1969 as Operating Administrator and Vice-Director of Administration while with the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Director of the Museum of the City of New York

The superb Noble collection of Greek and Italian vases is of international renown for its breath of themes and styles, forms and techniques. The Noble vases are therefore of superior educational value to illuminate aspects of ancient Greek myth and religion, warfare and athletics, wine culture and cosmetics, daily life and entertainment. Many vases of Noble’s collection have been on display in the past decades, but no dedicated presentation of the collection has been on view since the inaugural exhibition at the TMA in 1986. The two-year exhibition Through the Eye of a Collector will also showcase fascinating curiosities and beautiful sculpture in the TMA’s Noble Collection.

Judith Jamison was an American dancer and choreographer. She was the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1989 until 2011 and then its artistic director emerita. Jamison was photographed by Karsh in 1990 for his “American Legends” series.

The WGSBN is a Working Group of the International Astronomical Union and is responsible for assigning names to minor planets, comets and satellites of minor planets. We have been notified of the exciting news that a “small body” has been named ‘Karsh’ after Yousuf and his photographer brother Malak. Malak Karsh’s original materials are also held at Library and Archives Canada, the best possible home for the archives of these two talented siblings.

‘670744 Karsh’ is thus included in the List of minor planets: 670001–671000

Malak Karsh was best known for his photographs of Canada, and of the Ottawa region in particular. His 1963 photograph of a tugboat bringing logs up the Ottawa River, with the Library of Parliament in the background, was featured on the reverse of the $1 banknote first issued in 1974. He also founded the Ottawa Tulip Festival.

See the Bulletin from the International Astronomical Union.

Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and photographer Bryan Adams was born on this day, November 5, in 1959. With as many as 100 million record sales, Adams is on the list of best-selling music artists, and his photography has been published worldwide.

“In Stephen Spender’s garden in London, the poet W. H. Auden talked about ‘coming home.’ The Oxford University he knew, which he had longed for during bouts of deep nostalgic depression while living in New York, no longer existed for him when he returned to England. He spent two hours talking to my wife – prophetically – about friends who had died. He smoked incessantly, his conversation punctuated by wracking coughs. Meanwhile the light was gone from the garden, and I could take only a quick photograph of a beautiful and ravaged face. ‘Come soon, come soon,’ he invited, but I knew I would never see him again.” Auden died in September, 1973 (b. 1907).

Auden was photographed on this day, October 30, in 1972. Spender was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle.

William Coolidge was an American physicist and engineer, who made major contributions to X-ray machines. Born on this day, October 23, in 1873 (d. 1975), Coolidge was recorded by Karsh’s studio as “Dr. W. D. Coolidge. Retired Director, Research Laboratory, (X Ray Tube) General Electric Company.”

“Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City” is the latest magazine in The Museum of Modern Art’s One on One series. This portrait by Karsh illustrates the back cover.

“Three years after the publication of his work “The Disappearing City,” Frank Lloyd Wright unveiled a spectacular 12-by-12-foot relief model of Broadacre City, to illustrate how four square miles of “typical” countryside might be settled by 1,400 families. This tour de force has come to stand for a complex and largely impractical project, never to be built.” Read more at MoMA.

Read Karsh’s story of his Sitting with Wright.

Arthur Miller was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century. Miller was born on this day, October 17, in 1915 (d. 2005). He was photographed by Karsh for “American Legends.”

Eleanor Roosevelt was born on this day, October 11, in 1884. She was 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; she was photographed by Karsh at the White House.

This “industrial image” of workers at Atlas Steel is published in the Chipstone Foundation’s quarterly magazine Material Intelligence.

“The 11th issue of Material Intelligence is all about Steel. It comes out of the April 2024 symposium on Steel at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Material Cultures and Materialities. Edited by Glenn Adamson; contributors to this issue include historian Jenny Bulstrode, curator Rose Camara, historian Nathan Cardon, writer and critic Seph Rodney, historian Stephen Tuffnell, and writer and curator Alyssa Velazquez. Topics range from African gong languages, to bicycles and empire, to the sport of fencing.”

Clement Attlee was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was Deputy Prime Minister during the wartime coalition government under Winston Churchill, and served twice as Leader of the Opposition from 1935 to 1940 and from 1951 to 1955. He died on this day, October 8, in 1967 (b. 1883).

Attlee remains the longest serving Labour leader. Attlee was photographed by Karsh four times, with the Sitting records reading: 1941: “Right Honorable Clement Attlee MP”; 1943: “The Right Honorable Clement Attlee MP, Deputy Prime Minister”; 1945: “The Right Honorable Clement Attlee MP, For LIFE Magazine”; and 1949: “Prime Minister Clement Attlee, For Newsweek Magazine.”

On March 12, 2009, American financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to eleven federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme. By June, we had licensed a Karsh portrait of Madoff to Vanity Fair for their cover story. Madoff was photographed in a private sitting on this day, October 3, in 1988.

American comedian, actor, writer, and singer Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx was born on this day, October 2, in 1890 (d. 1977). Marx performed in films and vaudeville on television, radio, and the stage. The Marx Brothers were photographed by Karsh in 1948 for Collier’s Magazine, a weekly publication from New York.

Thurgood Marshall was officially sworn in to the nation’s highest court at the opening ceremony of the Supreme Court term on October 2, 1967. President Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark, saying that this was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.” Marshall was confirmed as an Associate Justice by a Senate vote of 69–11 on August 30, 1967.

Marshall served on the Court for the next 24 years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects. His most frequent ally on the Court was Justice William Brennan, who consistently joined him in supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty. Read more (Wikipedia)

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

Pioneering American broadcast journalist Barbara Walters was born on this day, September 25, in 1929 (d.2022). Walters was a working journalist from 1952 until 2015. In 1974 she became the first woman to co-host The Today Show, and in 1976 the first to co-host a network evening news program, on the ABC Evening News. Walters was photographed by Karsh at her apartment in New York, for Harper’s Bazaar.

The handing-over ceremony took place at the Embassy of Canada in Rome, Italy, on September 19, 2024. The stolen Churchill photograph is now on its way home to the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa.

Happy birthday Sophia Loren – 90 today! Loren was born on September 20, 1934. She is pictured here in 1981 with her younger son, Edoardo Ponti, in what Ms. Loren has stated is one of her favorite portraits. She was photographed for Paris Match.

See more photographs from the sitting.

Searching Mr. Karsh’s records for any day and month, there are almost always at least 30 sittings listed – 32 were photographed on a September 19th. On that day in 1987 Karsh photographed Marguerite Yourcenar. Yourcenar was a French novelist and essayist who was born in Brussels in 1903 (d. 1987). She was born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour. Yourcenar was honored with multiple awards and was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980.

See some more portraits of Yourcenar by Karsh.

After a worldwide hunt, the Ottawa Police Service has found the stolen Churchill photograph. The photograph was taken from the walls of the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa two years ago, and will be returned later this month. We are thrilled that the portrait will go back to its Canadian home.

Yousuf Karsh ran his studio at the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa from 1972 to 1992, and he and Estrellita Karsh lived there for 18 years. When they left in 1998, the Karshes gave the hotel several fine art prints. Most are in their Karsh Suite; the others in a reading room. In 2022 it came to light that the print of Winston Churchill had been replaced with a copy. After a flurry of press, and with the hotel appealing for photographs by guests that show the Churchill print, the theft was narrowed down to between December 25, 2021, and January 6, 2022.

“Tawney is on the precipice of long-overdue recognition.” So says Artnet in an article about a selection of Tawney’s work on view at Independent 20th century art fair in New York this week, September 5-8. Read the article.

Tawney was photographed by Karsh for House Beautiful Magazine.

See more portraits of Lenore Tawney.