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Yousuf Karsh was born in Mardin, Armenia, in 1908 and with his family fled Turkish persecution to Syria in 1922. The teenaged Karsh continued on alone to Canada in 1924, sponsored by his uncle George Nakash, a studio portrait photographer in Sherbrooke, Quebec. After barely six months of high school he began working full-time with his uncle, providing income which allowed him to help support his family in Syria. In his uncle’s studio he learned the language and repartee between photographer and client, and found this human dimension to photography deeply appealing. In 1928, Karsh’s uncle sent the young man to Bos-

ton to apprentice with master society portrait photographer John H. Garo. There, he was exposed to Garo’s prominent circle of visitors and learned the importance of light, shadow, and form. He stayed on in Boston after completing the apprenticeship, then returning to Canada, and relocating to the capital Ottawa in 1932 to be at the crossroads of visiting dignitaries.While inBoston,Karshhadstudiedthereproductions of great classical portraitist painters at the Boston Public Library and had been immersed in late pictorialism as he explored the realm of celebrity portrait photography. The soft focus and atmospheric effects inTurban, 1936, displays the romantic idealism present inhisearlyphotographs.Karshbeganmastery

of the black-and-white printing process inGaro’s studio and continued perfecting the process to support the subtle range of texture and light in his photographs. During this period Karsh was associated with the Ottawa Little Theatre where he met actress SolangeGauthier,whomhemarried in 1939.Therehe was also exposed to new potential in lighting and directing subjects that brought a more dramatic and chiseled sculptingof images, suchasRomeoandJuliet, 1933,whichsuitednewspaperandmagazinereproduction. By the mid-1930s, Karsh had developed a style that demonstrated his talent in shaping light, producing a stylish, more-angular composition than was fashionable in the conservative post-colonial era Ottawa where he had settled. His association with the Little Theatre also led to a commission from the theatre’s patrons, Lord and Lady Bessborough, representatives of theKing of England in Canada. During these early years, as he became known

across Canada asKarsh of Ottawa, he experimented with photography and entered international salon exhibitions. Karsh also built his reputation through society sittings and photographing personalities visiting Ottawa, such as character actress Ruth Draper, singer and activist Paul Robeson, and British royalty Lord Louis Mountbatten. Through Canada’s leader, William Lyon Mackenzie King, he was appointed to photograph Winston Churchill and captured the image by which the world remembers this pugnacious, fearless leader. Karsh traveled again to London in 1943 where he

photographed dozens of personalities that were first published in English popular illustrated magazines and the book Faces of Destiny, 1946, beginning his portfolio of international celebrities. In 1944, he undertook the first of many Life magazine assignments, portraying some 70 Washington, D.C. personalities. In the following year, he photographed the participants of the pre-United Nations San Francisco Conference, adding to his collection of what he called ‘‘people of consequence.’’ Karsh also received his first advertising assignments during this period, in which he promotedKodak film andmade portraits of distinguished musicians for RCA Victor. Karsh continued to photograph celebrities and travel around the world adding royalty, heads of state, Nobel Prize laureates, and spiritual leaders, and amassed an evocative volume of portraits. Karsh’s images were widely published in magazines and he produced a series of books that in addition to the pictures, recounted his experience with each sitter creating an impression about his subjects that was larger than the words or pictures alone. Some of his best-known portraits were made in the 1950s, including Georgia O’Keeffe, 1956, and Ernest Hem-

mingway, 1957. Karsh constantly traveled, accompanied by his second wife, Estrellita Nachbar, whom he married in 1962, preferring to photograph his subjects in their own environments even though his initial success had been as a studio artist. Although primarily known as a celebrity photogra-

pher, Karsh undertook two key assignments to portray everyday people for industrial commissions and the Canadian news magazine Maclean’s. The industrial profiles bestowed a heroic, dignified status on front-line workers, presenting strong, inspirational portraits, such as Rear Window (Gow Crapper), 1951, for Ford of Canada and equally compelling portraits for Canada’s Atlas Steel. The factory setting presented compositional and lighting challenges that Karsh met through combining negatives from various exposures. A profile of Canada’s cities assigned by Maclean’s required Karsh to personify the country, swelling with post-war prosperity. The series sketched the regions and captured the public’s conception of its identity, not surprisingly often using portraits of people to illustrate the geography of the country, such as Farmer by His House, ca. 1952. The majority of Karsh’s photography was in

black and white and developed by inspection with his own formula for gold-toned prints that are especially archival. The color photographs he produced, mainly in the 1940s and 1990s, were dye transfers realized through a printer in New York. The unique and impressive style that Karsh developed in this period influenced countless photography students, and he also touched many students while serving as a visiting professor at numerous universities in North America. Over his 60-year career Karsh photographed more

than half of the InternationalWho’sWhoMillennium list of the ‘‘100 most influential figures of the twentieth century’’ and was also the only photographer included in the list. Karsh’s images have been widely disseminated in publications and have appeared on stamps around the world. He received the Companion of the Order of Canada and countless honors, including degrees from more than 13 universities. In 1987, the National Archives of Canada purchased Karsh’s archives of negatives, color transparencies, and over 50,000 original prints. Karsh’s images are in collections around the world and have been exhibited internationally, including in Japan, Australia, Argentina, Canada, and the United States, and a definitive retrospective in Berlin in 2000. Karsh died in Boston, Massachusetts, July 13, 2002 at 94-years-old.