When the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh

November 6, 2014 10:41 AM

In Yousuf Karsh's 93 years, he had amassed more than 15,000 sittings to his name, capturing portraits of famous and worldly people. He rose to international prominence due to his portrait of Winston Churchill in 1941. At first, it was an honor for the amateur Karsh to walk up to or invite people to photograph them. After that, it became a privilege for future subjects to be accepted into Karsh's gallery. Karsh's website is a source for great insight into the photographer's life, in his own words and through his works. You can read more in this 1988 interview Karsh gave to the Paris Voice, see a few more portraits from the Smithsonian Magazine, and view an interview in three parts.

Though Yousuf's Churchill portrait is one of the most reproduced photos, Yousuf's younger brother, Malak, is also known, especially for his landscape photography in Canada, specifically around Ottawa. "When I saw the fall colours for the first time in my life, I said I'll never be a portrait photographer," said Malak. "I want to photograph the entire country." His photograph of two little tugboats in a river full of logs, behind the Parliament Buildings, was reproduced 3.4 billion times between June 3, 1974 and June 30, 1989, as it was on the Bank of Canada's one-dollar bills, and Malak was also fond of tulips, found around Ottawa in the spring (Google auto-translate; original page).

The brothers are now honored with the Karsh Award, to celebrate current photographers in Ottawa.

And if you'd like a quick take-away for your own portrait photography, here is a list of seven things Yousuf Karsh can teach you about photography.

posted by filthy light thief (8 comments total)

I was scrolling through all those pictures and it slowly dawned on me that I had no idea that all those portraits, many of which I've seen countless times, were all taken by the same guy.
posted by surazal at 10:59 AM on November 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ditto, surazal. Somehow I hadn't heard of Yousuf Karsh until reading the story of the black laboratory technician Vivien Thomas who was a pioneer in heart surgery with Dr. Alfred Blalock.

... In 1950, six years after he and Blalock had stood together for Blue Baby One, Blalock operated on Blue Baby 1,000. It was a triumphant moment—an occasion that called for a Yousuf Karsh portrait, a surprise party at the Blalock home, gifts of Scotch and bourbon, and a long evening of reminiscing with the Old Hands....

Emphasis mine. That was some 9 years after the Churchill portrait, for context.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:03 AM on November 6, 2014

Yosuf Karsh is, like Ansel Adams, often knocked for being a master of the craft - his involvement with technique - his commune with equipment and painstaking attention to composition - is so legendary, some critics assume there's nothing else there besides technique.

His stories of his interactions with his subjects reveals a biographer's soul with a transcendent eye for light and shape, and a knack of reading the essence of his subject and teasing it into an image. No, not anyone with an encyclopedic familiarity with the theory and practice of studio lighting can make photos like that. One of my favorite artists.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:22 PM on November 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

Well said, Slap*Happy. That comes out clearly in his interview with Paris Voice

Paris Voice: You once said that the perfect portrait has yet to be made. What did you mean?

Yousuf Karsh: In photography there is always an opportunity to develop your talent and yourself. There is always discovery, and the use of light is an elusive medium to express the human face. You can understand it, but you rarely master it.

Paris Voice: So, for you it's a question of mastering light?

Yousuf Karsh: Yes, it's light, but it's also understanding your subject. To make a significant photo of someone, you have to know a great deal about them - their accomplishments, station in life or contribution to their fellow man. All this information and observation plays an important part so that the photographer can make a sensitive image. I always read a great deal about the person I'm going to photograph. I imbue myself with their contribution to the world.

This is a highlight, there's more discussed in the interview.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:03 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Well, we were all sitting around in Horseshoe Valley, a place north of Toronto where we were writing new material, and we were discussing what to do about the LP sleeve. I said to Neil, 'Why don't we go for a real nice black and white portrait on the back, we've never really done anything like that before'. Geddy immediately latched on to the idea and said, 'Yeah, why don't we get Karsh?!' Everyone's reaction was positive, but we didn't think we had a chance. We thought, well, we can try, but he didn't strike us as being the kind of photographer likely to do this sort of thing. But he did!...basically he's a photographer of Hollywood actors and Royalty...and just about everyone in between! Looking at it, you can see that Karsh's pictures are very honest, they're not flattering in any way. Everybody in the band looks...a little older, a little rougher (laughs). But I think that's good. It's definitely not a rock 'n' roll picture, but it's a very true, realistic picture of the three of us." - Alex Lifeson, Kerrang!, May 3-16, 1984
posted by ovvl at 3:48 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

ovvl, that's an interesting anecdote on that group portrait, because the Wikipedia page on Yousuf Karsh currently includes a short reference to that photo, and the statement that "Geddy Lee of Rush has referred to the picture as a typical bar mitzvah photo."

Which it kinda does, to be honest. It's pretty far from the Ernest Hemingway portrait.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:06 PM on November 6, 2014

The print is terrible. Out of focus for one, and the film was overexposed and pull-processed, or he chose the absolute worst grade of paper for the print, or he hated them and wanted them to suffer.

The lighting, tho... blacks on other blacks surrounded by blacks, with pasty faces with a full gradation of complexion in between, all limned expertly. And the composition! The smallest the most intense and most captivating, the middle the most enigmatic and engaging, the largest bland and unremarkable, save for his size and presence, all in a neat arc.

I'd have never guessed it was a Karsh portrait until someone told me it was a Karsh portrait, made near the end of his life... but once informed, instead of lamenting what had become of Karsh, subtleties are made apparent.

He hated them.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:19 PM on November 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

Karsh is probably my favorite portraitist in photography. I grabbed a large anthology of his work a few years ago and thumb through it regularly.

"Regarding Heroes", a relatively high-quality printing of images used in a show which, if memory serves, was based out of a gallery/museum in Chicago?

Highly recommended, though my opinion means nothing.

Thanks for posting this!
posted by volk at 8:52 PM on November 6, 2014