Yousuf Karsh: Life & Work by Melissa Rombout traces the extraordinary journey of a refugee who became one of the country’s most celebrated photographers, documenting the heroes of the twentieth century and creating an enduring portrait of Canada.

Art Canada Institute proudly releases the print edition and the book is also available as a free, open-access, online publication in the celebrated Canadian Online Art Book Project. This sumptuous volume traces the creative career of Armenian Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, whose distinctive portraits of the great and famous influenced the way the public came to know them.

Author Melissa Rombout, an independent curator and expert in the histories of photography, spent many years as a photo-archivist at Library and Archives Canada, researching the vast Yousuf Karsh collection of more than 15,000 portrait sittings. In Yousuf Karsh: Life & Work, she not only examines the famed photographer’s aesthetic and technical choices but also offers a fresh perspective on what his work means to a twenty-first-century audience. “The world of photography has moved on since Karsh’s time,” says Rombout, “[but] Karsh’s method of portraiture continues to inspire dynamic engagement.”