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Library and Archives Canada acquires huge Malak Karsh collection

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  • Library and Archives Canada acquires huge Malak Karsh collection

    Ottawa Citizen, Canada
    Feb 28 2015

    Library and Archives Canada acquires huge Malak Karsh collection

    Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen


    Malak Karsh's vibrant photos of Ottawa tulips, Gatineau leaves and
    Canada's full glory are about to be preserved for future generations.

    Library and Archives Canada will announce Sunday the purchase of more
    than 200,000 photographic images from Malak's vast collection of
    transparencies, negatives and prints.

    The images, captured between 1968 and 2001, include many colour photos
    of Parliament Hill and the tulip festival, along with landscapes from
    across the country. Other images feature Canadians at work in
    agriculture, industry and the arts.

    Library and Archives Canada has already acquired much of Malak's
    black-and-white photo collection.

    The eldest of Malak's four children, Sidney, said his late father
    travelled the country hundreds of times, always with his camera at the
    ready. "He specialized in finding the beauty of Canada," Karsh, 68,
    said in an interview Friday. "He wanted to make sure that Canadians
    saw that beauty. ... It was a lifelong passion for him."

    Malak, who died in November 2001 from leukemia, would have celebrated
    his 100th birthday on Sunday.

    Library and Archives Canada plans to digitize the Malak collection and
    make some photos available to Canadians through its website.

    Librarian and Archivist of Canada Guy Berthiaume called photography an
    "integral and invaluable part" of Canada's documentary heritage. At
    least six of Malak's images have appeared on Canadian stamps and
    another -- a picture of a log drive behind Parliament Hill -- was
    featured on the back on the now-defunct $1 bill.

    The federal government paid $644,000 for the Malak collection.

    Malak Karsh was born in the city of Mardin, in what is now
    southeastern Turkey, only weeks before the Ottoman government began
    the forced deportation of its Armenian Christian population in April
    1915. The massive deportation, and accompanying massacres, killed more
    than one million Armenians, who were regarded as an enemy within by
    the Ottomans.

    Malak survived the slaughter and immigrated in 1937 to Canada where he
    learned photography from his older brother, Yousuf, a
    much-sought-after portrait photographer. He used the name Malak to
    distinguish himself from his famous brother -- and decided to focus his
    lens on the dramatic landscapes of his adopted homeland.

    It was a decision prompted by his first visit to the Gatineau Hills.

    "When I saw the beautiful autumn colours, I said, 'That is what I am
    going to be: I am going to be a photographer,' " Malak told an
    interviewer in 1997. "If Canada is all as beautiful as the Gatineaus,
    I am going to travel all over Canada."

    He established his own photographic studio on Sparks Street in April
    1941 and hired a young assistant, Barbara Fraser, whom he married the
    following year. Malak sold one of his cameras to pay for their
    honeymoon.

    Equipped with a German-made Hasselblad camera, Malak photographed much
    of the country, but he had a special affinity for the national capital
    region. "This is the only landscape that lets me take crocuses through
    the snow," he once said. "And in winter, the hoarfrost and trees here
    transform our landscape into a fairyland."

    Malak captured log drives on the Ottawa River, the Parliament
    buildings draped in snow, a tour boat emerging from the mist of Rideau
    Falls, the ByWard Market brimming with produce and, of course, tulips.

    In 1952, Malak approached the Ottawa Board of Trade with the idea of
    starting a tulip festival -- and a beloved Ottawa tradition was born.

    "I have unlimited love for tulips," he told one interviewer. "Every
    year I say, 'I have enough tulip pictures, I won't take any more.' But
    each year, it doesn't work."

    Malak continued to work after being afflicted with leukemia. He'd snap
    pictures of nurses and doctors during visits to the hospital, and once
    photographed a group of interns examining his gout-stricken feet. Only
    days before his death, he walked to Parliament Hill from his home in
    the Glebe to photograph a tree he admired.


    http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/library-and-archives-canada-acquires-huge-malak-karsh-collection

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