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Montreal Gazette, Quebec
Dec 8 2007
An honest portrait of Karsh
Ottawa photographer focused on history-makers
LOUISE ABBOTT, Freelance
Years ago, a friend gave me a second-hand copy of Portraits of
Greatness, a 1959 coffee-table book by renowned Canadian photographer
Yousuf Karsh. The portraits featured the likes of artist Georgia
O'Keeffe, composer Igor Stravinsky, writer Ernest Hemingway,
physicist Niels Bohr and Queen Elizabeth II.
The accompanying anecdotes described each sitting - how, for
instance, Karsh had plucked a cigar out of Winston Churchill's mouth
and thus caught the defiant expression that characterized the British
prime minister during the Second World War.
I found much in Karsh's black-and-white photos to be admired,
including his Rembrandtesque mastery of chiaroscuro. Nonetheless, I
preferred more natural environmental portraits to the formally posed
images that the Ottawa-based photographer produced with a
large-format camera and dramatic artificial lighting.
In the intervening years, I have seen more of Karsh's work in print
and in exhibition, and I have remained ambivalent about it. Reading
Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh did not change
my opinion, but it did deepen my understanding of the man behind the
camera and the era that shaped his photography - an era in which,
author Maria Tippett notes, "the public was hungry for visual images
of its heroes."
When Tippett proposed a biography in 1998, Karsh was uninterested in
cooperating, "convinced that he had already told his story in his
many autobiographical writings." After his death in 2002, however,
the cultural historian was granted full access to his archives;
interviews with family members, friends, and former employees; and
permission to reproduce images by and of Karsh. She spent four years
researching and writing her manuscript.
Of necessity, her narrative begins slowly. Karsh was born in Turkish
Armenia in 1908, and to understand him means understanding his roots
and the atrocities that befell Armenians during his childhood.
Members of Karsh's extended family became part of the Armenian
Diaspora, and that was how Karsh ended up at 15 in Sherbrooke under
the tutelage of his uncle, George Nakash, a portrait photographer.
Karsh had originally hoped to study medicine, but once he opted for
photography, he pursued it single-mindedly. At 19, he began an
apprenticeship with Boston portraitist John Garo, who taught him more
about the art of photography and about "the necessity of being well
attired and well educated in order to win the respect and inspire the
complicity of his subject." Karsh "came to share the belief that the
face could express the soul (and) ... that it was the achievers in
society who, more than anyone else, possessed an innate goodness,
which the photographer could expose by illuminating the soul."
Karsh read voraciously, improved his spoken English, and socialized
with Garo's artist friends. In 1931, he moved to Ottawa to establish
his own studio; the Canadian capital, he reasoned, "would attract the
most interesting people." His first choice had been Washington, but
"the (American) immigration quota for Armenians was nil."
With the assistance of Solange Gauthier, his first wife and business
manager, as well as the patronage of Canadian government officials,
Karsh rose to international fame in a remarkably short number of
years. He did so by working relentlessly (and demanding equally long
hours of his staff), seeking out and fastidiously researching famous
"achievers," and then using "old-world charm" and "gentle bullying"
to photograph them. In time, celebrities sought him out, eager to be
"Karshed."
Tippett chronicles Karsh's more than 60-year career thoroughly. She
highlights the portrait commissions for media and corporate clients
that took him and his cumbersome equipment around the world and made
him a wealthy man. She incorporates accounts of his lesser-known
journalistic work, too.
In tracing Karsh's life, Tippett has created an honest portrait. She
doesn't shy away from revealing the often contradictory facets of
Karsh's character: "When he spoke, he mixed courtesy and flattery
with scorn and boastfulness. He exuded an air of prosperity yet also
of insecurity."
She also acknowledges the art establishment's mixed reactions to
Karsh's work, citing those who praised his portraiture as beautiful
and compassionate, and those who dismissed it as fuddy-duddy hero
worship.
Although Karsh was sometimes offended by criticism, he knew that his
portraits would live on. They are, after all, a roll call of
history-makers - they include every U.S. president from Herbert
Hoover to Bill Clinton. "Karsh frequently compared himself to an
historian," Tippett concludes, "and this, ultimately, is what he was.
He recorded faces and gestures for posterity as much as for
publication in the press."
Louise Abbott is a writer-photographer in the Eastern Townships. Her
latest book, The Heart of the Farm, will be published by
Price-Patterson in 2008.
PORTRAIT IN LIGHT AND SHADOW: THE LIFE OF YOUSUF KARSH
By Maria Tippett
House of Anansi Press,
427 pages, $39.95
Dec 8 2007
An honest portrait of Karsh
Ottawa photographer focused on history-makers
LOUISE ABBOTT, Freelance
Years ago, a friend gave me a second-hand copy of Portraits of
Greatness, a 1959 coffee-table book by renowned Canadian photographer
Yousuf Karsh. The portraits featured the likes of artist Georgia
O'Keeffe, composer Igor Stravinsky, writer Ernest Hemingway,
physicist Niels Bohr and Queen Elizabeth II.
The accompanying anecdotes described each sitting - how, for
instance, Karsh had plucked a cigar out of Winston Churchill's mouth
and thus caught the defiant expression that characterized the British
prime minister during the Second World War.
I found much in Karsh's black-and-white photos to be admired,
including his Rembrandtesque mastery of chiaroscuro. Nonetheless, I
preferred more natural environmental portraits to the formally posed
images that the Ottawa-based photographer produced with a
large-format camera and dramatic artificial lighting.
In the intervening years, I have seen more of Karsh's work in print
and in exhibition, and I have remained ambivalent about it. Reading
Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh did not change
my opinion, but it did deepen my understanding of the man behind the
camera and the era that shaped his photography - an era in which,
author Maria Tippett notes, "the public was hungry for visual images
of its heroes."
When Tippett proposed a biography in 1998, Karsh was uninterested in
cooperating, "convinced that he had already told his story in his
many autobiographical writings." After his death in 2002, however,
the cultural historian was granted full access to his archives;
interviews with family members, friends, and former employees; and
permission to reproduce images by and of Karsh. She spent four years
researching and writing her manuscript.
Of necessity, her narrative begins slowly. Karsh was born in Turkish
Armenia in 1908, and to understand him means understanding his roots
and the atrocities that befell Armenians during his childhood.
Members of Karsh's extended family became part of the Armenian
Diaspora, and that was how Karsh ended up at 15 in Sherbrooke under
the tutelage of his uncle, George Nakash, a portrait photographer.
Karsh had originally hoped to study medicine, but once he opted for
photography, he pursued it single-mindedly. At 19, he began an
apprenticeship with Boston portraitist John Garo, who taught him more
about the art of photography and about "the necessity of being well
attired and well educated in order to win the respect and inspire the
complicity of his subject." Karsh "came to share the belief that the
face could express the soul (and) ... that it was the achievers in
society who, more than anyone else, possessed an innate goodness,
which the photographer could expose by illuminating the soul."
Karsh read voraciously, improved his spoken English, and socialized
with Garo's artist friends. In 1931, he moved to Ottawa to establish
his own studio; the Canadian capital, he reasoned, "would attract the
most interesting people." His first choice had been Washington, but
"the (American) immigration quota for Armenians was nil."
With the assistance of Solange Gauthier, his first wife and business
manager, as well as the patronage of Canadian government officials,
Karsh rose to international fame in a remarkably short number of
years. He did so by working relentlessly (and demanding equally long
hours of his staff), seeking out and fastidiously researching famous
"achievers," and then using "old-world charm" and "gentle bullying"
to photograph them. In time, celebrities sought him out, eager to be
"Karshed."
Tippett chronicles Karsh's more than 60-year career thoroughly. She
highlights the portrait commissions for media and corporate clients
that took him and his cumbersome equipment around the world and made
him a wealthy man. She incorporates accounts of his lesser-known
journalistic work, too.
In tracing Karsh's life, Tippett has created an honest portrait. She
doesn't shy away from revealing the often contradictory facets of
Karsh's character: "When he spoke, he mixed courtesy and flattery
with scorn and boastfulness. He exuded an air of prosperity yet also
of insecurity."
She also acknowledges the art establishment's mixed reactions to
Karsh's work, citing those who praised his portraiture as beautiful
and compassionate, and those who dismissed it as fuddy-duddy hero
worship.
Although Karsh was sometimes offended by criticism, he knew that his
portraits would live on. They are, after all, a roll call of
history-makers - they include every U.S. president from Herbert
Hoover to Bill Clinton. "Karsh frequently compared himself to an
historian," Tippett concludes, "and this, ultimately, is what he was.
He recorded faces and gestures for posterity as much as for
publication in the press."
Louise Abbott is a writer-photographer in the Eastern Townships. Her
latest book, The Heart of the Farm, will be published by
Price-Patterson in 2008.
PORTRAIT IN LIGHT AND SHADOW: THE LIFE OF YOUSUF KARSH
By Maria Tippett
House of Anansi Press,
427 pages, $39.95