Karsh Signature

Yousuf Karsh, master photographer of the 20th century

City of Straws

City of Straws, 1940

Lesser-known Karsh images include some interesting experimentation. Karsh wrote in regard to a trip he made in the 1930s: “My first glimpse of New York was something between a wondrous dream and a terrible nightmare; something unreal.” In Maria Tippett’s biography of Karsh, Portrait in Light and Shadow (Anansi Press, 2007) she notes that Karsh found a way of portraying these mixed feelings when a member of his staff placed a box of straws on the table. Karsh said: “Before I realized it, I was… evolving my own interpretation and just the upper structure of a great and ephemeral metropolis.”

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