Yousuf Karsh

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Yousuf Karsh

Jul 18th 2002

From The Economist print edition

Yousuf Karsh, photographer of the famous, died on July 13th, aged 93

AP

SO MUCH praise has been heaped upon Yousuf Karsh that it is tempting to believe that he was the world's greatest photographer. But then you think of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Ansel Adams and a dozen others, all of whom produced pictures that have an enduring quality. Mr Karsh was, though, for half a century perhaps the greatest portrait photographer in the monumental manner. Unlike Mr Cartier-Bresson, the master of the Leica, Mr Karsh preferred to use a camera that looked hardly different from the weighty apparatus of the Victorian pioneers. It stood on a hefty tripod and the image was captured on a glass negative almost the size of a page of The Economist.

Intimidated by this awesome instrument the sitter was expected to be patient as Mr Karsh composed the lighting, a hot light here, a softer one there. The camera is focused, and Mr Karsh emerges from under a dark cloth. The negative holder slides in. The sitter is expectant, and probably restless. It can't be long now. But Mr Karsh is not quite ready. He once said, “Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera. If it is a likeness alone, it's not a success.”

Mr Cartier-Bresson would no doubt concur. Whether the image is falling on 35mm film or on a glass plate, the aim is to capture what Mr Karsh called the “brief moment” of truth. How is it done? No one is sure, not even the photographer. Whatever it is, great photographers have it. The many millions of happy snappers do not.

Mr Karsh's portraits have been faulted, by those reckless enough to criticise him, for all looking the same: impressive, solemn, usually in black and white to heighten the feeling of drama. It is said he could make the woman next door look like Queen Elizabeth. His admirers retort that this was his style. It was like complaining that Rembrandt's paintings did not make you laugh. No one expressed surprise that Karsh and Rembrandt could be mentioned in the same breath.

When fame came

Yousuf Karsh was a Canadian by adoption: Karsh of Ottawa is how he signed his photographs. But he thought of himself as an Armenian. After hundreds of years as an independent state Armenia had been eventually divided between Turkey and Russia. Mr Karsh had the misfortune to be born in the part ruled by Turkey, whose policy toward Armenians was to exterminate them. In his teens he joined the flow of Armenians who found refuge in North America. An uncle in Canada who was doing well as a portrait photographer gave young Yousuf a job and a cheap camera of the time called a Box Brownie (with which he won a prize). A few years later he was taken on by John Garo, a well-known Boston portrait photographer of that era, who also happened to be an Armenian.

In the 1930s Mr Karsh had his own business in Ottawa. His leisure time he spent with a local drama group, experimenting with lighting. What transformed him from a journeyman photographer into a star was a chance opportunity to photograph Winston Churchill, who in December 1941 was on a brief visit to Ottawa. Mr Karsh set up his equipment in a room in the Canadian Parliament. Churchill was led in, grumbling. “Why was I not told of this?” He said Mr Karsh could have two minutes and no more to take his picture and lit a cigar. “Forgive me, sir,” Yousuf Karsh said, removing the cigar from Churchill's lips, and releasing the shutter on his camera.

Looking at the picture now, and knowing the story behind it, you can imagine Churchill, slightly petulant, deprived of his dummy. But at the time the expression matched the widespread feeling about the British leader, pugnaciously leading a brave nation against an all-conquering foe. Life magazine bought the picture for $100. Mr Karsh did not haggle. He just wanted to see his work in print. Eventually it became the most reproduced portrait in the history of photography.

Mr Karsh was never again looking for work. The work came looking for him. Over the years practically anyone who was anyone had their picture taken by Yousuf Karsh. “People of consequence”, he called them, politicians, royalty, popes, writers, scientists, actors. To be “Karshed” proved that you had arrived. It was almost like buying immortality. There are Karsh portraits of a succession of 12 United States presidents. Mr Karsh loved the famous. “It's the minority that make the world go around,” he said.

He seemed to be aware that his gift could be misused. It was clever to make a politician look like a statesman, but was this artistically truthful? Mr Karsh confronted this tricky question in an essay in which he considered the difference between photographing the merely famous and “the challenge of portraying true greatness adequately”.

He reckoned that he had met the challenge with Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Casals, among others. As a preliminary to a “challenge” he would get to know as much about a subject as possible; read biographies, speak to the subject's friends. But any photographer could do that. Why did Mr Karsh quite often capture, as he said, “the essential element that has made them great”? He did not know how the magic worked. “And I am not going to make inquiries.”

Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

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