The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” was ratified on this day, January 16, in 1919.

In the late 1920s Yousuf Karsh apprenticed with Boston-based portraitist John H. Garo. In his book, Yousuf Karsh & John Garo: The Search for a Master’s Legacy, author Mehmed Ali wrote,

“Aside from lessons in photography, Garo was also giving an invaluable “education in the humanities.” This education was chiefly accomplished through his exposure to the city’s cultural and civic leaders who visited the Boylston Chambers studio to experience Garo’s hospitality.

To compensate for the slowing workload and to illustrate his free spirit in the face of Prohibition, Garo began having parties at the Boylston Street studios during the 1920s. When the sun fell around four o’clock in the afternoon and Garo could no longer photograph using the natural northern light, spontaneous gatherings would occur. Illegal liquor was concocted in the darkroom by adding gin, rye, or bourbon flavoring purchased at a drugstore to alcohol brought to the studio by a local bootlegger who smuggled his wares in turpentine tins. Depending on the moods of the guests, the conversation would run from “stimulating and . . . serious” to “very frivolous.”

“Garo’s salon was my university, a noble institution at which to have been permitted to study.”
The young Karsh was fully in the midst of these gatherings and participated by serving as a bartender, “which service Garo seemed to associate with the handling of chemicals used in his developing room.” With dramatic flourish Garo would herald his understudy: “Now for Dr. Koussevitsky, Yousuf . . . let us have some nitric acid,” which was code for a gin and tonic. This would be followed by another rousing call: “And for Arthur Fiedler, some hypo,” which was le nom de guerre for bourbon.”