Yousuf Karsh, master photographer of the 20th century
French artist Jacques Henri Lartigue died on this day, September 12, in 1986 (b. 1894). Born in Paris to a wealthy family, Lartigue started taking photographs when he was seven. He was photographed by Karsh in 1981 and the sitting notes say: “Guest at Roger Therond’s home when YK visited during trip to Paris March 1981″ Therond was the editor of that magazine and was himself photographed in 1981, two days before Lartigue’s sitting.
Michael DeBakey was an American general and cardiovascular surgeon, scientist and medical educator who became Chairman of the Department of Surgery, President, and Chancellor of Baylor College of Medicine at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. His career spanned nearly eight decades. He was born on this day, September 7, in 1908 (d. 2008)
We partnered with Kasmin Gallery who are using this Karsh portrait of Max Ernst to illustrate his artist page on their website. Painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet, Ernst (1891-1976) was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism.
On this day, August 30, in 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American to be confirmed as a United States Supreme Court justice. He was nominated by Lyndon B. Johnson, and served until 1991.
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films, television movies, and plays; her career spanned five decades. Bergman was born on this day, August 29, in 1915, and died on this day in 1982. She was photographed by Karsh in February, 1946, which was a rather prolific month for Karsh photographing Hollywood royalty: Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Joseph Cotton, and Humphrey Bogart to name a few.
Thanks to the power of this website, all 15,000+ Sittings are searchable, and you can sort by name, or date. See the 1946 Sittings here.
American lawyer and politician Edward “Ted” Kennedy died on this day, August 25, in 2009 (b. 1932). Kennedy served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. Karsh photographed his elder brother Senator John F. Kennedy and John’s wife Jacqueline in 1957, and John F. Kennedy solo in 1960, shortly before he was elected president. He photographed Robert Kennedy in 1962 while he was attorney general in his elder brother’s administration.
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair kicked off today, August 15, in 1969. Karsh photographed two musical artists who performed at the festival: Joan Baez (in 1970) and Ravi Shankar (in 1966). Shankar played through the rain on Friday from 10-10:35 pm; Baez played later the same night into Saturday morning, while six months pregnant.
Major-General Alexander Cambridge (1874-1957), 1st Earl of Athlone, full name Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George; he was born Prince Alexander of Teck. Recorded by Karsh as His Excellency Earl Athlone, he was photographed on this day, August 8, in 1940, and on another eleven occasions!
Walter Annenberg (1908-2002) was an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and diplomat. Karsh’s sitting record notes him as “Publisher, The Philadelphia Enquirer” – Annenberg owned and operated Triangle Publications, which included ownership of The Philadelphia Inquirer, TV Guide, the Daily Racing Form and Seventeen magazine. He was photographed a second time, in 1990.
This portrait from 1965 is freshly added to the website.
On August 2, 1970, Karsh was in Italy photographing several artists. The list includes sculptors Emilio Greco, Jacques Lipchitz, Giacomo Manzu, Marino Marini, and as seen in this portrait, Lipchitz with Henry Moore and Marini.
“I arrived in Havana on the twenty-sixth of July, Cuba’s national holiday, in time to hear this charismatic speaker address thousands of people in a rousing endorsement of the benefits of the Revolution. It was, for Castro, a short speech-two-and-a-half hours instead of his customary six. For the next three days, my companion and tour guide was Celia Sanchez, Cuba’s wiry, energetic Secretary of State. From the three sites Ms. Sanchez offered for photography, I chose a simple ceremonial room, its stark walls and bookshelves suggesting a barracks, which turned out to be Castro’s favorite office.” Castro was photographed on August 1.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was born on this day, July 28, in 1929. She was First Lady of the United States as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. Although she stated that her priority as a First Lady was to take care of the President and their children, she also dedicated her time to the promotion of American arts and preservation of its history.
Karsh wrote: “Widowhood and adversity had not yet touched the glamorous young wife of the handsome Senator from Massachusetts. Our meeting was at Hammersmith, her mother’s home in Newport. I photographed her against a Coromandel screen that complemented her dark beauty. Weeks later, in New York, she saw me walking down Fifth Avenue and rushed toward me to inquire breathlessly about her photographs. Our last meeting was shortly before her untimely death, when she came to my exhibition ‘American Legends.’ She stood alone at the entrance, her quiet presence penetrating the crowd.”
As a 22-year-old medical student at the University of Toronto, Dr. Charles Herbert Best worked as an assistant to the surgeon Dr. Frederick Banting, and contributed to the discovery of the pancreatic hormone insulin, which led to an effective treatment for diabetes – the hormone was successfully isolated on this day, July 27, in 1921.
Karsh photographed the celebrated American artist Norman Rockwell on this day, July 25, in 1958, for an Eastman Kodak advertisement – Rockwell is holding a Kodak Retina camera. This is the portrait that ran in the subsequent ad campaign.
Karsh had photographed Rockwell two years earlier, and wrote about their meeting:
He was enthusiastic in 1956 on hearing that I wished to photograph him and sent a car from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to fetch me from New York. On reaching his studio, I found a note on the door telling me: “Please come in and make yourself at home. I will be back at one.” My host arrived shortly afterwards, took me to lunch with some of his friends, and then we got down to work.
Mr. Rockwell seemed intensely interested in my methods, and I soon realized that photography is an essential ingredient of his own art. He told me he employed a regular photographer who, upon his instructions, took pictures of suitable candidates for his paintings. These pictures, blown up to the right size, are pasted over one another or placed in juxtaposition until the painter has exactly the joint effect he wants – a kind of collective model, I suppose. The characters distilled by his brush follow no particular tradition, he told me, but only “human interest” and a very cheerful realism. The artist should be an entertainer, not a crusader… I asked him if technique could be exalted over integrity. “Technique,” he retorted, “is a matter of self-expression. If integrity goes, technique alone cannot save it.”
Herbert Marshall McLuhan was born on this day, July 21, in 1911 (d. 1980). McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He coined the expression “the medium is the message” in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, and the term “global village.” He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. McLuhan was photographed by Karsh in 1967 and 1974.
Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16, 1969, and the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle landed on the moon on this day, July 20, 1969. Karsh photographed the crew, Michael Collins, Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong, in September of that year.
Karsh photographed the three Apollo 8 astronauts, William Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, in April, 1969. Anders took the beloved “Earthrise” photograph on that mission. Read more.
Augustus John (1878-1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher regarded as one of Britain’s greatest artists. John was photographed during Karsh’s prolific trip to Europe in 1954 (on this day, July 18). Karsh photographed more than 100 people on this trip, as diverse as Albert Camus and Pablo Picasso in France, and Benjamin Britten and Moira Shearer in the UK.
It is worth noting that in some cases, Mr. Karsh was able to spend a good amount of time with his Sitters, which led to some intimate stories.
“When, in 1941, I spent two and a half days with the great Canadian humorist I had yet to realize that his fame had spread throughout the world. Perhaps that ignorance simplified my task. I photographed Leacock eating his breakfast; playing with Stevie, his son; fishing; listening to music; writing sixteen hundred words every morning; and, of course, laughing. He did not laugh, however (or so I thought), because he felt happy but because laughter was his profession. For he had not known much real happiness, especially in his domestic life.
“Wit, a quality quite different from humour, constantly bubbled in his casual talk. One evening, for instance, he decided to take me fishing. Two craft were moored at his dock, a canoe and a motorboat. With my usual impatience I jumped into the motorboat. “No, no,” Leacock shouted. “We’re going out in the canoe. I’ll paddle.” When I asked him the reason for his choice, he answered: “Because the motorboat always gets there.”
“After seeing a set of his portraits, he awarded me the Stephen Leacock Non-Existent Gold Medal and wrote his own captions for the photographs. They soon appeared in the Illustrated London News and many other publications. Most of them now hang in the library of Leacock’s house at Orillia, Ontario, which has been wisely preserved as a national shrine commemorating the wistful Englishman who brought his genius of humour to Canada.”
English actor and director Laurence Olivier died on this day, July 11, in 1989 (b. 1907).
Karsh recorded 175 sittings in 1954, when Olivier, and Viven Leigh, were photographed. They include Albert Camus, Pablo Casals, Walt Disney, Georges Enesco, Andre Malraux, and Pablo Picasso.
“To End All War: Oppenheimer & The Atomic Bomb” is a new documentary from NBC News Studios “Exploring how one man’s relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.” This portrait is included in the film.
The film is the true story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s journey from driven and ambitious scientist to remorseful and tormented man struck hard by the gravity of what he had done. Oppenheimer was tapped to direct the weapons laboratory at Los Alamos during the infamous Manhattan Project, the government research project formed to create the atomic bomb. The narrative centerpiece of “To End All War” is the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945.
On NBC/Peacock in the USA.
British-born architect and furniture designer T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings was photographed on this day, July 6, in 1945, for House Beautiful magazine. In the late 1930s and 1940s he was the most important decorator in America. His work is considered a modern mixture of the classical elements of Ancient Grecian design, and Art Deco design. Read more (Wikipedia).
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was born on July 5, in 1889 (d.1963). Cocteau was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. Cocteau drew on a negative which Karsh used to create this final image.
Karsh wrote: “Time did not permit me, in 1949, to photograph M. Cocteau in his beautiful country home and he, of course, was busy with a thousand things… this master-of-all-arts and insatiable experimenter with life. We arranged, therefore, to take the pictures in a friend’s apartment, directly about Cocteau’s tiny Paris office.
“As a stage and film director, and in later years a painter, he understood at once what I was trying to do. He looked on with interest as the lighting was prepared and backgrounds chose, but, an old ‘pro’ himself, he did not attempt to direct me and I was pleased to have his confidence. He chatted freely about many things, his thoughts bubbling over, and his face, infinitely expressive, altering momentarily with his mood.”
Reuben Nakian (1897-1986) was an American sculptor and teacher.
Poet Frank O’Hara was the curator of a major Reuben Nakian retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art in 1966. In the exhibition’s catalog, O’Hara noted: “Nakian is unrepressed, un-neurotic, unabashed in his approach to sensuality, however tortuous his esthetic commitment, and whether his subject be death, bestiality, or Arcadian dalliance.” Read more (Wikipedia).
Edward Steichen (1879 – 1973) the prominent photographer and influential curator, was photographed by Karsh on four occasions, including on this day, June 27, in 1965. Steichen came to the United States from Luxembourg in 1881. He painted and worked in lithography before undertaking photography in 1896, and first exhibited photographs at the Philadelphia Salon in 1899; Steichen was ultimately credited with transforming photography into an art form.
Austrian-born filmmaker Billy Wilder was born on this day, June 22, in 1906 (d. 2002). His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he received seven Academy Awards among multiple other commendations.
In the 1950s, Wilder directed and co-wrote a string of critically acclaimed films, including the Hollywood drama Sunset Boulevard (1950), for which he won his second screenplay Academy Award. He also directed Marilyn Monroe in two films, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959).
A couple of years ago we heard from Dr. Gary Genosko, the Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University. He was working on the first ever book about Harley Parker (1915-1992) who was a Canadian typographer, painter and exhibition designer, and Marshall “the medium is the message” McLuhan‘s collaborator. Parker’s family had given Dr. Genosko a copy of Parker’s Karsh portrait, and they kindly shared it with us.
Dr. Genosko has recently published an article about the search for a lost manuscript of Harley Parker’s book, The Culture Box: Museums.
Canadian typographer, painter and exhibition designer Parker was media thinker Marshall McLuhan’s collaborator and right-hand man. He was popularly known as the “McLuhan of the museum”. Parker’s career as general display chief at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto stretched from 1957-1968, and the experimental gallery he mounted at the Museum of the City of New York in 1967 was a touchpoint for his progressive ideas about museums as perceptual laboratories.
American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, Frank Lloyd Wright was born on this day, June 8, in 1867 (d. 1959).
Karsh wrote: “Surrounded at Taliesin West, Arizona, by twenty-three of his apprentices, the founder of organic architecture brandished a cigarette he would later sheepishly cut out of his portraits. A strong personality, he was admired – or reviled – for his independence of thought and for his buildings unique in design and structure in the United States, Europe, and Japan. He was more interested in discussing his collection of Japanese prints than the survival of his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo during an earthquake. At one point this avowed iconoclast surprised me: ‘Most men scramble through life, ready to snatch and run, thus cutting themselves off from divinity within. If I don’t believe in the now, I can’t believe in the hereafter.’”
Among a multitude of other assignments, David Hume Kennerly was Chief Official White House Photographer for Gerald Ford. In 1973 Kennerly had photographed the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew and the selection of Gerald Ford as Agnew’s replacement. Kennerly’s first Time cover was of Congressman Ford, and it was also Ford’s first appearance on the front of Time. That session with Ford led Kennerly to a close personal relationship with him and his family. After Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, the new president selected him to be his official photographer. Read more (Wikipedia).
One of David’s last acts in that role, he reminded us recently, was to arrange the Karsh sitting with Gerald and Betty Ford, on January 6, 1977; David sent us two frames of Mr. Karsh in action that day at the White House.
See the portraits of the Fords by Karsh.
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, winning the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born on this day, June 6, in 1875 (d. 1955). Mann was photographed by Karsh for LIFE magazine in 1946, one of more than 50 people Karsh photographed for that publication between 1943 (M. Jan Masaryk, Deputy Prime Minister & Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia) and 1982 (Judith Anderson and Zoe Caldwell in costume for parts in Medea. Photographed together and individually.)
Robert F. Kennedy had scored major victories when he won both the California and South Dakota presidential primaries on June 4, in 1968. He addressed his supporters in Los Angeles shortly after midnight on June 5, and upon leaving the address, he was shot three times; he died on June 6, 1968.
A major proponent of civil rights himself, several public institutions jointly honor Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
William Orville Douglas (1898-1980) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was known for his strong progressive and civil libertarian views, and is often cited as the U.S. Supreme Court’s most liberal justice ever. Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, Douglas was confirmed at the age of 40, becoming one of the youngest justices appointed to the court. His portrait is newly added to the website.
Marilyn Horne is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer born in 1934. She is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, and has won four Grammy Awards. Horne was photographed on this day, May 30, in 1991. Karsh photographed dozens of sitters in 1990 and 1991 for his “American Legends” series for East/West Network. See the others.
New portraits to the website of John Foster Dulles. Dulles was an American diplomat, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. He served as Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. Karsh photographed him in 1952 as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He died on this day, May 24, in 1959 (b. 1888).
Bertrand Russell was born today, May 18, in 1872 (d. 1970). Russell was a philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950, the year after this portrait was made. Karsh wrote,
‘Happiness,’ said the most controversial and certainly the most impish of modern philosophers, ‘comes from pandering to one’s self-esteem.’ I judged from the gleam of mischief in Lord Russell’s eye that this was likely to prove a controversial sitting. I was wrong. My subject delights to tilt with intellectual giants, he expresses a profound and almost terrifying pessimism, but is quite amenable before the camera. He distracted me with his dark thoughts when my mind should have been on my work.
In 1933, when Karsh’s records start, Karsh lists around 250 sitters and 30 Dominion Drama Festival plays. Several of these first sittings are passport photos (Karsh photographed hundreds) and weddings (also hundreds). One of the first sitters (April 25, 1933) whose portraits have been digitized, is Lysle Courtenay. Courtenay was an actor, set dresser and set designer for the Ottawa Little Theater.
Agnes Macphail (1890-1954) was the first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons and one of the first two women elected to the Ontario legislature. She served as a Member of Parliament from 1921 to 1940; from 1943 to 1945 and again from 1948 to 1951, she served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Macphail was photographed by Karsh on this day, May 15, in 1934. This print, signed by both photographer and sitter, is from the collection at the Library and Archives, Canada.
A request came in from an organization whose building was designed by the esteemed Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal. Born in 1934, Cardinal is perhaps best known for his designs of the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec (1989) and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. (1998). He is considered one of Canada’s most influential contemporary Indigenous architects. Learn more about him on his website.
Cardinal was photographed by Karsh in 1989 and we have added some portraits of him. See more.
John Davison Rockefeller Jr. was an American financier and philanthropist. He was photographed by Karsh in 1955, and the sitting says the assignment was for the Williamsburg Foundation, which he helped found, which is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting a part of the historic district in the city of Williamsburg, Virginia. John D. Rockefeller Jr. died on this day, May 11, in 1960 (b. 1874), and his portrait has just been added to this website.
“The Swiss psychiatrist, in his library in Zurich, agreed with the title of James Thurber’s book, “Let Your Mind Alone.” ‘But,’ he remarked, ‘unfortunately, your mind is not discreet enough to leave you alone.’ I said I would make an unsatisfactory patient for the psychiatrist because I gained my happiness through my work. ‘Ah,’ he answered, ‘the secret of happiness – those who seek happiness can never find it. You should wait till it comes, like the arrival of a guest later in the evening.’”
Dr. Jung was photographed on this day, May 9, in 1958. See a second portrait of Dr. Jung.
Yousuf Karsh was heavily involved with the Ottawa Little Theater, where he cut his lighting teeth, and was the photographer for the Dominion Drama Festival. There are dozens of records related to the Festival of plays performed between 1933 and 1948. This fabulous frame came in from a professor of drama in New Brunswick, who told us that in 1948, North America’s longest-running women-run theatre company, Alumnae Theatre Company (presently in their 105th year), took their production of Ruth Gordon‘s play Years Ago to the Dominion Drama Festival where Yousuf Karsh was the festival photographer, and gave us a copy of this image.