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Yousuf Karsh came to Ottawa because he knew he would find the famous and powerful here.
Likewise, the famous and powerful came to Ottawa because they knew that’s where they would find Karsh.
“No matter where I travelled on my photographic journeys, it was the city of Ottawa to which I returned,” Karsh wrote two years before his death in 2002. “I was always proud when the title ‘Karsh of Ottawa’ appeared underneath my photographs.”
From his studio — for 40 years on the second level of the Hardy Arcade, then for another 18 at his more famous location in the Château Laurier hotel — Karsh photographed some of the most famous people of the 20th century.
But it was his portrait of a scowling Winston Churchill that brought him the most fame; it became one of the most iconic portraits ever shot.
It was Dec. 30, 1941 and Churchill was in Ottawa to address Parliament. Karsh had been hand-picked for the photo by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and had been brought to the Speaker’s chamber to set up his lights and camera.
When Churchill arrived, he was angry because he hadn’t been told he was to be photographed. He lit a cigar as Karsh made the final adjustments.
Churchill was clutching the speech he had just delivered to Parliament (the famous “Some Chicken. Some neck” speech) and Karsh asked that he tuck the pages away in his pocket. Then, famously, he snatched the cigar from Churchill’s mouth.
“By the time I got back to my camera,” Karsh recalled years later, “he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me.”
This famous portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was taken by photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1941.
King later mailed Churchill three copies of the stark black-and-white photograph. “I think that you will agree that the photograph is one of the best, if not the very best, ever taken of yourself. I, at least, am so inclined to view it,” King wrote.
Today, Churchill still glowers from the wall of the Speaker’s chamber and the current Speaker, Geoff Regan, delights in retelling the story.
When then-British prime minister Tony Blair visited Ottawa in 2001 to address Parliament, he thought the Churchill photo had been put up in his honour.
“Blair was astonished to learn that it wasn’t taken in Britain, that it was taken in Canada, right here in this very room,” Regan said. “He changed his speech so he could make mention of it.”
Yousuf Karsh was born Dec. 23, 1908 in Mardin, in what is now Turkey, near the Syrian border. Like other Armenian Christians, the Karsh family was persecuted by the ruling Turks and eventually fled across the border to a refugee camp in Aleppo, Syria. Karsh was 16 when he was sent to Canada where an uncle worked as a photographer. The teen arrived in Halifax on New Year’s Eve 1923, and set out for his uncle’s studio in Sherbrooke, Que.
After five years working with his uncle, Karsh went to Boston to apprentice for five more years with well-known American photographer John Garo. In 1931, finally ready to strike out on his own, he returned to Canada and settled in Ottawa.
“I chose Canada because it gave me my first opportunity and I chose Ottawa because, as the capital, it was a crossroads that offered access to a wide range of subjects,” Karsh once said.
“I think he was drawn to Ottawa because it was the capital and in his estimation there would be important people here,” said James Borcoman, a former curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada. “That was his whole approach to photography, to make his reputation through photographing famous people.”
Photos: Yousuf Karsh, an icon in photography
The range of Karsh’s subjects is astonishing: prime ministers from Robert Borden to Jean Chrétien; U.S. presidents from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton; the Queen (so often that she referred to Karsh as “my old friend”); Picasso; Martin Luther King; Muhammad Ali; Helen Keller (Karsh’s personal favourite); Mother Teresa; Neil Armstrong and the crew of Apollo 11; Humphrey Bogart; Audrey Hepburn … the list goes on and on.
Less well-known was Karsh’s other work: street photography and pictures of assembly line workers in Windsor, Ont. commissioned by the Ford Motor Company of Canada.
A collection of photos by the legendary Canadian photographer, Yousuf Karsh, gives poignant insight into automobile manufacturing when most of the work was done by very human
Karsh and Borcoman clashed when Borcoman wanted to include the other “bread and butter” photographs in a 1989 Karsh retrospective at the National Gallery.
“When he looked at what I was doing, his face went white,” Borcoman recalled. “He was aghast. He said, ‘You can’t do that!’ I said, ‘Why not?’ He said ‘It’s not dignified!’
“If there’s one thing that lay behind all his work, he always wanted to show the best in the person. He wanted to bring out something positive in the person’s personality. He would never do something that he thought would belittle or demean them.”
That unwillingness to challenge his subjects is one of the great criticisms some made of Karsh’s work. His portraits quite deliberately reinforced the “public mask” of celebrities, showing them only as they themselves wanted to be seen.
President John Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy,
“I wanted to take that reputation that he already had and show there was something more in it than the public normally sees,” Borcoman said. “There’s a whole range of work in there that showed he had a sensitivity to the medium that’s more than just portraits of famous people.”
When he arrived in Ottawa, Karsh at first used natural light for his photographs. But when he was commissioned to take some portraits for Ottawa’s Little Theatre (where met his first wife, Solange, an actress) he became fascinated by the power of light and shadow in theatrical lighting.
“The portraits are handsome,” Borcoman said. “They’ve got a Rembrandt-like effect to them because he understood lighting. He began to see how the artificial lighting was used to heighten the drama of the stage work.”
Together with his younger brother, Malak, Karsh’s name became synonymous with photography in Ottawa. Increasingly, Yousuf jetted around the world to meet and photograph his subjects, but he always returned to the third-floor suite in the Château Laurier where he lived with his second wife, Estrellita, whom he married after Solange died of cancer in 1961.
Yousuf Karsh and his wife Estrellita (left) wiewing the prints donated to Chateau Laurier in the Reading lounge of the hotel.
Karsh’s last notable portrait was of Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1993. Ill health and Ottawa’s harsh winters sent Yousuf and Estrellita to Boston in 1997, where he lived until his death. He gave his last interview in 1998, insisting it be with his hometown paper, The Ottawa Citizen.
“He loved to walk every day, and it simply got to the point where Ottawa winters were too much for him, ” his longtime assistant Jerry Fielder told the paper after Karsh’s death. “Down here, it was possible to get out more often. But if anyone thinks he lost his love, or his devotion, to Ottawa, they would be very wrong.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
A snapshot of Yousuf Karsh
Dec. 23, 1908: Yousuf Karsh is born.
1932: Moves to Ottawa
1941: Shoots iconic portrait of Winston Churchill in Ottawa.
1972: Move his Ottawa studio to the Château Laurier Hotel.
1987: National Archives of Canada acquires the complete collection of negatives, prints and transparencies produced and retained by Karsh up to 1987.
1990: Invested as a Companion in the Order of Canada.
July 13, 2002: Dies in Boston.
查看原文...
Likewise, the famous and powerful came to Ottawa because they knew that’s where they would find Karsh.
“No matter where I travelled on my photographic journeys, it was the city of Ottawa to which I returned,” Karsh wrote two years before his death in 2002. “I was always proud when the title ‘Karsh of Ottawa’ appeared underneath my photographs.”
From his studio — for 40 years on the second level of the Hardy Arcade, then for another 18 at his more famous location in the Château Laurier hotel — Karsh photographed some of the most famous people of the 20th century.
But it was his portrait of a scowling Winston Churchill that brought him the most fame; it became one of the most iconic portraits ever shot.
It was Dec. 30, 1941 and Churchill was in Ottawa to address Parliament. Karsh had been hand-picked for the photo by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and had been brought to the Speaker’s chamber to set up his lights and camera.
When Churchill arrived, he was angry because he hadn’t been told he was to be photographed. He lit a cigar as Karsh made the final adjustments.
Churchill was clutching the speech he had just delivered to Parliament (the famous “Some Chicken. Some neck” speech) and Karsh asked that he tuck the pages away in his pocket. Then, famously, he snatched the cigar from Churchill’s mouth.
“By the time I got back to my camera,” Karsh recalled years later, “he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me.”
This famous portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was taken by photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1941.
King later mailed Churchill three copies of the stark black-and-white photograph. “I think that you will agree that the photograph is one of the best, if not the very best, ever taken of yourself. I, at least, am so inclined to view it,” King wrote.
Today, Churchill still glowers from the wall of the Speaker’s chamber and the current Speaker, Geoff Regan, delights in retelling the story.
When then-British prime minister Tony Blair visited Ottawa in 2001 to address Parliament, he thought the Churchill photo had been put up in his honour.
“Blair was astonished to learn that it wasn’t taken in Britain, that it was taken in Canada, right here in this very room,” Regan said. “He changed his speech so he could make mention of it.”
Yousuf Karsh was born Dec. 23, 1908 in Mardin, in what is now Turkey, near the Syrian border. Like other Armenian Christians, the Karsh family was persecuted by the ruling Turks and eventually fled across the border to a refugee camp in Aleppo, Syria. Karsh was 16 when he was sent to Canada where an uncle worked as a photographer. The teen arrived in Halifax on New Year’s Eve 1923, and set out for his uncle’s studio in Sherbrooke, Que.
After five years working with his uncle, Karsh went to Boston to apprentice for five more years with well-known American photographer John Garo. In 1931, finally ready to strike out on his own, he returned to Canada and settled in Ottawa.
“I chose Canada because it gave me my first opportunity and I chose Ottawa because, as the capital, it was a crossroads that offered access to a wide range of subjects,” Karsh once said.
“I think he was drawn to Ottawa because it was the capital and in his estimation there would be important people here,” said James Borcoman, a former curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada. “That was his whole approach to photography, to make his reputation through photographing famous people.”
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Photos: Yousuf Karsh, an icon in photography
Helen Keller with Polly Thompson, 1948. Yousuf Karsh/-
Brothers Malak Karsh and Yousuf Karsh Pat McGrath/OTT
Yousuf Karsh stands in front of his portraits of Bill and Hillary Clinton at the Canadiana embassy in Washington. /-
Yousuf Karsh and his wife Estrellita (left) wiewing the prints donated to Chateau Laurier in the Reading lounge of the hotel. Bruno Schlumberger/OTT
This famous portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was taken by photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1941. Yousuf Karsh/Handout
Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Yousuf Karsh/-
Queen Elizabeth Yousuf Karsh/-
President John Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, Yousuf Karsh/-
Copy shot of Peter Crawford's Yousuf Karsh photo he purchased for $5.99 i Value Village. The picture is of Princess Juliana of The Netherlands. It was taken in 1945, and is signed by the subjects. Yousuf Karsh/Postmedia/Ernest Doroszuk
An image by Yosuf Karsh , part of a collection acquired by The Art Gallery of Windsor consisting of 39 works by the acclaimed photographer Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002). The acquisition concentrates on the artist's work following a visit to Ford's Windsor plant in February 1951. Yousuf Karsh/-
Karsh The Searching eyes- The maestro of the lens with his photographs of top left and clockwise' Albert Einstein Albert Scweitzer and Winston Churchill. Karsh stands beside some of the photographic portraits that made him famous. /(MUST CREDIT) - Photo CBC Fred Phipps
Edmonton, January 30, 2010: A visitor to the Art Gallery of Alberta takes in the Yousuf Karsh exhibit following the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of the remodeled 85,000 square foot art gallery DAVID BLOOM/Postmedia
A collection of photos by the legendary Canadian photographer, Yousuf Karsh, gives poignant insight into automobile manufacturing when most of the work was done by very human Yousuf Karsh
Yousuf and Malak Karsh. Photographer unknown. /-
Shortly after making his famous wartime image of a scowling Winston Churchill, Ottawa photographer Yousuf Karsh went to Orillia to make this photo of a smiling Stephen Leacock, seated at the desk where he composed many of his books and articles. Yousuf Karsh
Speaker Geoff Regan sits in front of the original Karsh portrait of Winston Churchill that was taken in his office in 1941 - in almost the same spot where Churchill stood for a young Yousuf Karsh. Julie Oliver/Postmedia
Lord Tweedsmuir with Oresident Franklin D. Roosevelt Yousuf Karsh, fonds/LAC accession 1987-054 August 14, 1936
Government House - Lord Tweedsmuir in Indian Costume. May 5, 1937 Yousuf Karsh/Library and Archives Canada
Lord Tweedsmuir with Oresident Franklin D. Roosevelt Yousuf Karsh/Library and Archives Canada, accession 1987-054
Sound and Vision: Portraits of musicians and composers by Yousuf Karsh. /-
June 30/97.Special citizenship ceremony at the estate of Mackenzie King, Quebec. Fifty people received their citizenships. World famous photographer, Yousuf Karsh, 92, was also there as a special guest to reaffirm his citizenship of 50 years ago. Julie Oliver/Postmedia
Jacques Greber, as photographed by Yousuf Karsh. Yousuf Karsh/Library and Archives Canada
Former prime minister Mackenzie King had a close bond with his dog, Pat. He also has museums dedicated to him. CREDIT: Yousuf Karsh //Library and Archives Canada / PA-174052
Kingsmere, AUGUST 21, 1940 -- Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King with his dog Pat I at Moorside Cottage ** Yousuf Karsh/Library and Archives Canada / PA-174058
The range of Karsh’s subjects is astonishing: prime ministers from Robert Borden to Jean Chrétien; U.S. presidents from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton; the Queen (so often that she referred to Karsh as “my old friend”); Picasso; Martin Luther King; Muhammad Ali; Helen Keller (Karsh’s personal favourite); Mother Teresa; Neil Armstrong and the crew of Apollo 11; Humphrey Bogart; Audrey Hepburn … the list goes on and on.
Less well-known was Karsh’s other work: street photography and pictures of assembly line workers in Windsor, Ont. commissioned by the Ford Motor Company of Canada.
A collection of photos by the legendary Canadian photographer, Yousuf Karsh, gives poignant insight into automobile manufacturing when most of the work was done by very human
Karsh and Borcoman clashed when Borcoman wanted to include the other “bread and butter” photographs in a 1989 Karsh retrospective at the National Gallery.
“When he looked at what I was doing, his face went white,” Borcoman recalled. “He was aghast. He said, ‘You can’t do that!’ I said, ‘Why not?’ He said ‘It’s not dignified!’
“If there’s one thing that lay behind all his work, he always wanted to show the best in the person. He wanted to bring out something positive in the person’s personality. He would never do something that he thought would belittle or demean them.”
That unwillingness to challenge his subjects is one of the great criticisms some made of Karsh’s work. His portraits quite deliberately reinforced the “public mask” of celebrities, showing them only as they themselves wanted to be seen.
President John Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy,
“I wanted to take that reputation that he already had and show there was something more in it than the public normally sees,” Borcoman said. “There’s a whole range of work in there that showed he had a sensitivity to the medium that’s more than just portraits of famous people.”
When he arrived in Ottawa, Karsh at first used natural light for his photographs. But when he was commissioned to take some portraits for Ottawa’s Little Theatre (where met his first wife, Solange, an actress) he became fascinated by the power of light and shadow in theatrical lighting.
“The portraits are handsome,” Borcoman said. “They’ve got a Rembrandt-like effect to them because he understood lighting. He began to see how the artificial lighting was used to heighten the drama of the stage work.”
Together with his younger brother, Malak, Karsh’s name became synonymous with photography in Ottawa. Increasingly, Yousuf jetted around the world to meet and photograph his subjects, but he always returned to the third-floor suite in the Château Laurier where he lived with his second wife, Estrellita, whom he married after Solange died of cancer in 1961.
Yousuf Karsh and his wife Estrellita (left) wiewing the prints donated to Chateau Laurier in the Reading lounge of the hotel.
Karsh’s last notable portrait was of Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1993. Ill health and Ottawa’s harsh winters sent Yousuf and Estrellita to Boston in 1997, where he lived until his death. He gave his last interview in 1998, insisting it be with his hometown paper, The Ottawa Citizen.
“He loved to walk every day, and it simply got to the point where Ottawa winters were too much for him, ” his longtime assistant Jerry Fielder told the paper after Karsh’s death. “Down here, it was possible to get out more often. But if anyone thinks he lost his love, or his devotion, to Ottawa, they would be very wrong.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
**************************
A snapshot of Yousuf Karsh
Dec. 23, 1908: Yousuf Karsh is born.
1932: Moves to Ottawa
1941: Shoots iconic portrait of Winston Churchill in Ottawa.
1972: Move his Ottawa studio to the Château Laurier Hotel.
1987: National Archives of Canada acquires the complete collection of negatives, prints and transparencies produced and retained by Karsh up to 1987.
1990: Invested as a Companion in the Order of Canada.
July 13, 2002: Dies in Boston.
查看原文...
