WEEKLY DISCUSSION No.31 - Winston Churchill Portraits by Yousuf Karsh

<p>When I was asked to start the discussion this week, on an iconic photograph, I had difficulty deciding on the photograph that I would use. However, portraiture is my favorite discipline and I therefore choose to open the discussion by asking your opinion on not one, but two iconic portraits.<br /><br />Yousuf Karsh is one of my all time heroes. If I could have chosen a photographer to work for as a gopher and tea boy in my formative years, I would have chosen Karsh. When most teenagers worshipped teen idols from the silver screen or the sports stadium, I worshiped Yousuf Karsh. From very humble beginnings, Karsh had the good fortune to be sent from Armenia to live with his uncle in Canada, when he was a child. His uncle was a photographer and arranged for the young Yousf to be apprenticed to a Boston, MA portrait photographer, John Garro, in 1928. The rest, as they say, is history, because Karsh went on to become one of the greatest portrait photographers of the twentieth century. <br /><br />One of Karsh’s most iconic portrait photographs is that of Winston Churchill. Made in 1941, when Churchill was in Otttawa to address the Canadian House of Commons, it has become synonymous with the very essence of Winston Churchill as the man who led Britain to victory in the second world war. Karsh had the rare gift of being able to portray the inner character of his subjects. He wrote, “Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the photographer must act or lose his prize." That Karsh achieved his prize is evident in his work. Look at his portrait of JFK, and one sees the visionary. Look at his portrait of Eisenhower, and one sees the determined leader. Look at Nelson Mandella and one sees the compassionate statesman with a sense of humour. <br /><br />Karsh’s portrait of Winston Churchill became an instant hit in 1941, but few realise that Karsh made two portraits, the second one has Churchill smiling at the camera. Karsh told the story of how he captured the images, in his book Faces of Our Time. He said,"He was in no mood for portraiture and two minutes were all that he would allow me as he passed from the House of Commons chamber to an anteroom. Two niggardly minutes in which I must try to put on film a man who had already written or inspired a library of books, baffled all his biographers, filled the world with his fame, and me, on this occasion, with dread." Churchill marched into the room scowling, "regarding my camera as he might regard the German enemy expression suited Karsh perfectly, but the cigar stuck between Churchill’s teeth seemed incompatible with such a solemn and formal occasion. "Instinctively, I removed the cigar. At this the Churchillian scowl deepened, the head was thrust forward belligerently, and the hand placed on the hip in an attitude of anger." Karsh captured Churchill’s mood perfectly and titled the photograph “The Roaring Lion.” As Churchill’s mood lightened, Karsh captured another image of him, smiling. Karsh himself admits that this second image is his favourite of the two.<br /><br />I show you both images here. In my opinion, the first, scowling portrait portrays the man as he is remembered, but the second, smiling portrait reveals that inner secret that few were privy to. I prefer the second. Which do you prefer, and why? Should Karsh have released both portraits?<br>

Churchill Scowling: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw08607/Winston-Churchill?set=262%3BPhotographs+by+Yousuf+Karsh&search=ap&rNo=2<br>

Churchill Smiling: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw08608/Winston-Churchill?set=262%3BPhotographs+by+Yousuf+Karsh&search=ap&rNo=3<br>

JFK: http://c300221.r21.cf1.rackcdn.com/yousuf-karsh-a-photographer-in-the-shadows-of-his-famous-subjects-photos-1389370147_b.jpg<br>

Mandella: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9vfl7PnKAkI/ToiKaXj0jwI/AAAAAAAALKs/Bsw8VtKVpQU/s640/Nelson-Mandela-by-Yousuf-Karsh.jpg</p>

<p>You can see more of the work of Yousuf Karsh here: http://www.karsh.org/</p>

<p> <br /><br /></p>

<p>Love the lighting on "scowling" and the pose sums up the man better than the happy picture. By comparison the other portraits linked look a bit ordinary, though the material on his own websites shows a man with a clear view and an impressive body of work. </p>

http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/set/262/Photographs+by+Yousuf+Karsh

 

 

This site can be viewed on a mobile device.

I think it is more accurate to say that "the Roaring Lion" print "sums up" the popular impression of Sir Winston as an fierce

war time leader at a time when it really was just the British Commonwealth and the Soviet Union battling the German and

Italians in Europe, and only the Commonwealth at war with he Japanese in the Pacific.

 

Churchill knew the value of the portrait as a propaganda message. At the time he was desperate to get the United States

into the fight. This helped.

 

If you ever have a chance to visit PPA's headquarters in Atlanta they have one of Karsh's original life-size or possibly it's slightly

larger than life size prints of "The Roaring Lion" as well as a few other Karsh prints on display. It never fails to thrill me.

Even the gleam on his fingernails is impressive.

 

What David discerns as the difference in lighting between the smilie and the scowl is the difference in printing.

<p><em>What David discerns as the difference in lighting between the smilie and the scowl is the difference in printing.</em><br>

And pretty rough printing it is, too! As I remarked during the previous Karsh discussion<br>

http://www.photo.net/casual-conversations-forum/00cTDo<br>

<em>“Karsh was a great technician and clearly had the human qualities required to interact with his subjects. His creative technique was self-evidently to allow his subjects to project their desired public face and to see his role as facilitating the recording and dissemination of this. In this he was dramatically successful, and I for one am happy to applaud him and not ask for more from his work.”</em><br>

In the Churchill pic, Karsh may have been under so much time pressure that he could not set up lights and has paid the price for not using a hairlight to separate Churchill’s head from the wood panelling – I am sure this neg was a pig to print. Nonetheless, Churchill’s fame gave the picture wings – even today, I would think this is the best-known portrait of the man.</p>

Having seen the print , I can assure you that Karsh did an excellent and carefully meticulous job of lighting and exposure,

as well as posing. He was already well known for his dramatic lighting. He may have had two minutes to photograph Sir

Winston, but that doesn't mean he didn't spend hours scouting, lighting, staging and otherwise preparing the "set" the

Prime Minister stepped into.

<p>I think these photos of Churchill and many I've seen by Karsh are studies of the masks, not unveilings of those behind the masks. Kennedy as statesman, Churchill as leader, formalistic portraits that, to me, are sculptural more than they are personal or intimate. Even the one of Churchill smiling, while it may be somewhat out of character, it is still very much tied to the austere character presented in the more stern portrait. This is still not a warm and fuzzy unveiling of vulnerability.</p>

<p>Though Karsh knows a good moment to push the shutter and has great control over lighting and pose, his subjects seem to remain somewhat distanced, and he often shows the famous person as removed, idealized or idolized, and photographically stylized more according to Karsh's visual sensibility than to their own personalities, treating a diversity of "characters" in a very similar portrait style.</p>

<p>While comparing a photo to a sculpture has its complimentary side, as it's not an easy quality to achieve, in this case it also has its down side in the heaviness I often feel from Karsh's work. His portraits seem to focus more on face and expression as a bodily function than an emotional or spiritual one. Regarding the mask issue, I have no problem with a portraitist dwelling on masks, since the masks and personas we adopt are every bit as real and every bit as significant as our more candid moments.</p>

<p>Few have the chops to work with the masks while also transcending them. One word I would not use to describe Karsh is "transcendent." That's why Karsh fails to grab me instinctually and with the emotional depth and force of other photographers.</p>

<p><em>Having seen the print , I can assure you that Karsh did an excellent and carefully meticulous job of lighting and exposure …</em><br>

Not on the evidence here, although the NPG prints seem to be very poor ones. Printing is to a certain extent a matter of taste, Karsh seemed to have favored very heavy burning-in, but even so in my book the “St. Elmo’s Fire” on Churchill’s shoulders is a sign of lighting that has gone badly wrong. Karsh seems to have tried to use the reflection in the wood panelling to separate Churchill from the background, which in the scowling picture has worked with the head but not the shoulders. Considering that Karsh was probably lighting with a focusing spotlight, judicious adjustment of a barn doors attachment would have saved a lot of perspiration during printing.<br>

The smiling picture looks like a proof picked out of the darkroom waste bin – if we ignore the screaming highlight on the forehead, Karsh still seems to have changed his mind post-exposure about the relationship between the sitter and the background, even though he has not attempted anything like as much burning-in as with the other pic. I think any lighting cameraman from a movie studio would have laughed at Karsh’s lighting, being used to getting similar final results by lighting alone.</p>

<p>They're all very nice, but Churchill Scowling is my favorite due to the dramatic Rembrandt-like lighting.</p>

<p>The lighting in the scowling print reminds me of the lighting that was popular in cinema at the time (e.g. Citizen Kane). I wonder if Karsh's portraiture was perhaps inspired by cinematography, or whether the cinematographers of the time lit their scenes in a manner popular with portrait photographers. Perhaps they inspired each other.</p>

<p>Karsh did a fine job of capturing the traditional British demeanor in all its subtlety. Churchill's scowl in "The Raging Lion" isn't raging at all; it's more a matter of simmering. And the smile is more of a smirk.</p>

<p> </p>

I pretty much agree with Fred G., but I believe the heroic statue like , untouchable iconographic simplicity that characterizes

Karsh's portraiture was a deliberate strategy on his part. Today we don't view the portraits with the same sense of what

makes a "good" portrait as was done in Kash's time. His portraits are meant to flatter the subject and be an "official"

depiction of the subjects likeness. So yes they aren't meant to reveal, they are I believe meant to be a mask the/inject

wished to present to the public.

 

Contrast this approach to what his near contemporary Arnold Newman's was doing in his portraits of many of the same

people. Newman really was seeking to reveal something of the emotional and intellectual state of the person in front of

his camera. Karsh would have never dared to make Newman's portrait of the Nazi War Criminal and profiteer Alfred

Krupp for example.

 

David: good points but I don't know which book you are referring to and as every working photographer from the film era

remembers making prints for half tone reproduction meant making a very different looking print than one made for display,

and then there was the skill and care used in translating that print into ink on a page.

<p>Some of you are such great fans of A.D. Coleman, no doubt you'd be interested in his 1973 review of a retrospective of Karsh's work:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>A D Coleman in "Shows We've Seen" <em>Popular Photography</em> 1973-08<br /><br /> Yousuf Karsh, at the Albright-Knox Museum,<br /> Buffalo, N.Y. (March 27-May 6).<br /><br /> Since the work of Yousuf Karsh has evidenced neither change nor growth over the past quarter-century, a retrospective exhibit like this-whose usual function is to demonstrate the development of an artist's lines of inquiry-only serves to point up the limitation arid monotony of Karsh's<br /> uninventive style. The triviality of his body of work is manifest in the fact that there is little to be said about it now that could not easily have been said 20 years ago. Karsh seems to me perhaps the most overrated photographer of our century, one whose reputation is based on an entirely sterile, repetitive, and banal accumulation of images. His output reminds me of nothing so much as the countless changes rung by those hack painters who frequent summertime outdoor art festivals on the theme of the sad-eyed kitten or the clown on velvet. Overstylized, stilted, utterly without life or insight, Karsh's portraits apparently fill some continuing cultural need for kitsch caricatures of the world's superstars. Karsh, as a cultural phenomenon incarnate, functions as an equalizer of sorts, reducing everyone who comes before his lens to a depersonalized gargoyle. The resulting grotesqueries display-I presume unintentionally-Karsh's inability to relegate his acclaimed lighting technique to its proper place. Its total domination of virtually every image in this show points up just how much a slave Karsh is to his style and his equipment-a sad and sorry sight.<br /> The only reason, in fact, that I bother to write about this exhibit at all is that it is the largest photographic show mounted at the prestigious Albright-Knox since that institution's courageous presentation of a controversial Photo-Secession exhibit back in 1910. Granted, the Albright-Knox has coasted on that early venturesomeness far too long. Nevertheless, to mar that unblemished record by making this ghastly travesty of photography its second major plunge into the medium was, from an historical and esthetic standpoint, the very worst kind of curatorial irresponsibility.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Mind you, this is the guy who later complained of Ansel Adams' ungentlemanly, "harsh" criticism of Mortensen. :|</p>

When first saw this photo as a young man I admired the bulldog tenacity or grim determination expressed in the photo. Now that I am older than Mr. Churchill was at the time that the photo was taken, it looks to me more like a photo of a very tired and worried man. I shall leave the psychologists to deal with that.

 

I do like the dark and somber tones of the scowling photo. The smiling photo may be a better exposure (or better printing) but the darker photo conveys much of the feeling of doom and gloom that was coming down upon England. It would appear that Karsh took the scowling photo from a bit off to the right of Mr. Churchill to get more of a profile and then moved about a foot to the left to get more of a straight on, traditional shot. I think the scowling photo with more profile works better for that reason alone, discounting all other aspects.

 

 

And why take away his cigar? That was as much a part of Mr. Churchill's persona as his "V for victory" fingers sign.

<p>Ellis, when I said “in my book”, I meant metaphorically “according to my beliefs and ways of working”. Back in the days before digital, I used to do a demonstration of studio portraiture for camera clubs using my “instant picture camera”, a Sinar 4x5 with a Polaroid back. I used to turn on the three main lights (key, fill and hair accent) one at a time and shoot a picture each time so that the audience could see the effect of each one before going on to show the effect of additional small lights and reflectors. Obviously the last thing I could say was “This doesn’t look like much now but it’ll be great when I’ve finished burning it in!”<br>

Karsh’s style was heavily mannered, ultimately the end result is what matters and if a photographer is willing to toil for hours in the darkroom to make a print, well and good – except of course that in a commercial studio there will be a recurring call for reprints – if a negative is well lit, the studio junior can print it, if you’re going in for changing tones by 3 stops or more, this will require the more expensive skills of a senior tech or even the studio owner.<br>

The burning-in of the background in the Karsh pictures has been done as skilfully as is possible, but even so I call this effect “St. Elmo’s Fire” (or more simply “sledgehammer printing”) – as far I am concerned, it’s SO much easier to put the tones you want into the negative through appropriate lighting (and virtually essential with color stills, and absolutely essential with movies). </p>

<p>The OP version is darker then other versions. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6bmTSuGIRKc/ToeBYEFvenI/AAAAAAAALJQ/MTjAIuUVB5U/s1600/Yousuf_Karsh_Winston_Churchill_1941_Yousuf_Karsh.jpg<br>

This may effect your opinion of the photo. </p>

<p>I think it shows Churchill as most people remember him. Determined. Firm. Steady in spite of the cane. Isn't that what makes a good portrait? I don't understand trying to get inside to shoot the <em>real</em> man. Maybe this <em>was</em> the real man.</p>

<p><em>The OP version is darker then other versions. <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6bmTSuGIRKc/ToeBYEFvenI/AAAAAAAALJQ/MTjAIuUVB5U/s1600/Yousuf_Karsh_Winston_Churchill_1941_Yousuf_Karsh.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">(link)</a></em><br /><em>This may effect your opinion of the photo.</em><br>

Agree - 100x better!</p>

<p>No matter what technical inadequacies there may be, I like the "scowl" photograph the OP references very much. I've seen versions with a lighter background, more separation of head from background etc and like them less. It's good to use light and shade to produce the emphasis you want in a photograph, and I'd like to think that that's just what Karsh set out to achieve, for this print at least.</p>

<p>No matter what technical inadequacies there may be, I like the "scowl" photograph the OP references very much. I've seen versions with a lighter background, more separation of head from background etc and like them less. It's good to use light and shade to produce the emphasis you want in a photograph, and I'd like to think that that's just what Karsh set out to achieve, for this print at least.</p>

<p>I think that in such cases, no-one is actually interested in the "real man" behind the image. They want a photo of the public image of Churchill at that time and moment of history and Karsh delivered it in his standard professional way as he systematically did with so many other public figures. </p>

The second link to "The Roaring Lion", the one that Alan posted. Still doesn't match the tonal range, especially in the skin

tones and highlights of the large print I have seen. But I agree that it is better than the NPG online version.

I've read a lot of A.D. Coleman, and up until last week, subscribed to his blog. I finally came to the conclusion that wading

through the acreage of dross he produces in order to find the nugget worth findings as t a good use of time. He's a man in

love mostly with the sound of his own voice. He thinks it resounds with the ring of authenticity but the tones I hear I hear

in it are the clank of slag metal shaped into a coin and stuffed into a parking meter.

 

That said he did great work over the past few years detailing the careless dismemberment and dispersal of the Polaroid

collection, and the administrative academia hijinks at the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona.

 

Of course some of you probably feel the same way about my verbosity too.

<p>I've always enjoyed this image of Churchill though I recall seeing nicer versions of it. As for Coleman, he is everything I dislike in the written word. Nothing much to say and takes all day to say it. <br /><br />Rick H.</p>

<p>Here's hoping the Coleman sideshow has a short run in this thread.</p>

<p>My problem with this portrait is that any criticism is likened to tagging Mount Rushmore. Rarely see much--if any--mention of its context. Britain was on the ropes in late '41 as was Churchill whose health was poor. I've always wondered just how many people saw this portrait prior to its appearance on the triumphant cover of Life in May '45. It's trademarked Karsh taxidermy at its finest.</p>

<p> "...and only the Commonwealth at war with he Japanese in the Pacific."</p>

<p>Ellis, the Japanese didn't attack Hong Kong till December 8, 1941.</p>

<p>From the OP, Karsch wrote, “Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can."</p>

<p>So my question is did Karsch believe he succeeded in that task with the Churchill portrait? In Kennedy's, in Mandela's? In those, or in which ones would Karsch have said he had succeeded in capturing "a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world."?</p>

<p>I wonder if Karsch simply meant that he was able to connect for a moment in a personal way with great people during a session. Karsch seems to have connected personally with Carl Jung in 1958 <a href="http://www.karsh.org/#/the_work/portraits/carl_jung">http://www.karsh.org/#/the_work/portraits/carl_jung</a>, and to me Jung looks pleasantly amused by him.</p>

<p> </p>