Death of Yousuf Karsh

[upscan]

Karsh died tonight in a Boston Hospital age 93. I had a chance

opportunity to meet Karsh at the Ottawa Hotel, The Chateau Laurier

where he and his wife lived. I was taken aback by his warmth, his

friendliness, his humility and exquisite yet natural courtesy. Being

in his precense one could not but feel an aura of greatness about the

man. It was a fleeting moment that I treasure.

[mark_nowaczynski2]

The following was copied from the Canadian Press newswire:

 

Photographer Yousuf Karsh, who immortalized 20th century greats, dead at 93

at 22:57 on July 13, 2002, EST.

 

 

OTTAWA (CP) - Photographer and raconteur Yousuf Karsh, known as Karsh of Ottawa to generations of world leaders, celebrities and cognoscenti who sought immortality through the lenses of his cameras, has died. He was 93.

 

Karsh died at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston on Saturday, said hospital spokeswoman Jacqui Fowler. His European agent, Roger Eldridge, said Karsh died of complications following surgery. The kind of surgery wasn't disclosed. Karsh's studio in the Chateau Laurier Hotel where he once lived, just across the canal from Parliament, became a waypoint for many of the greatest names of the 20th century. And if they couldn't come to him, Karsh went to them.

 

Kennedy, Castro, Einstein, Churchill, Mandela, Hemingway, Schweitzer, Kruschev. Presidents and prime ministers. Kings and queens. Scientists and doctors. Authors, composers and artists. The list seems endless.

 

"He was a master of the masters," longtime Canadian photojournalist Boris Spremo said Saturday. "There won't soon be another like him."

 

Spremo said Karsh's secret was the precise use of lighting. Karsh would work feverishly to perfect his lighting techniques so that the personality of his subject could be captured in one, sole facial expression.

 

"When the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh of Ottawa," George Perry once wrote in London's Sunday Times.

 

Karsh, born in Turkey on Dec. 23, 1908, left his native land to escape persecution for his Armenian heritage and came to Canada in 1924 to live with his uncle, a photographer, in Sherbrooke, Que.

 

He dreamed of becoming a doctor but didn't have the money for medical school, so after a brief apprenticeship his uncle sent him off to Boston to study photography under eminent portraitist John H. Garo.

 

It was there, in Boston's museums and galleries, that Karsh discovered the cultural treasures of the world and refined his understanding of light and shadow.

 

He launched his Ottawa studio in 1932, moving to his famous digs at the Chateau Laurier in 1972.

 

"As a capital city, I knew Ottawa would be a crossroads for statesmen coming from London and Washington," he once recalled. "I felt there would be great advantages here and I would be ready for them when they came."

 

On Dec. 30, 1941, Karsh had one of the most famous photographic encounters in the history of the craft.

 

British prime minister Winston Churchill had addressed the Canadian Parliament and Karsh was there to record one of the century's great leaders.

 

"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," Karsh wrote in Faces of Our Time (U of T Press, 1971), his 10th of 15 books.

 

"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, Karsh wrote, "regarding my camera as he might regard the German enemy."

 

His expression suited Karsh perfectly, but the cigar stuck between his 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."

 

The image captured Churchill and the England of the time perfectly - defiant and unconquerable.

 

It became one of the most reproduced photographs ever taken, used on Churchill commemorative stamps in many countries, including Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

 

There were many other memorable encounters over the years.

 

Karsh loved people, and could hold his own with the best of them.

 

His sessions were events in themselves and became renowned for their repartee. An engaging, intelligent personality, he had a gift for disarming his subjects, for dismantling the walls that people erect between themselves and the camera - exposing, it seemed at his best times, their very souls.

 

"He had a great ability to get right to the heart of the matter and be able to put it into a photograph," his late brother, Malak Karsh, a renowned architectural and landscape photographer, once said of him.

 

Karsh was polite and curious. He asked questions, elicited answers, reflections, profound moods. His sessions became known as "visits" and his subjects gave of themselves "with love and respect," said his brother.

 

"People knew they had a master with them and they appreciated that opportunity. They gave him the opportunity to find out what he needed to know about them so he could render them in the best way possible."

 

Combined with his mastery of light and composition, it made a formidable portraitist - a modern-day master, working most often in shades of grey.

 

Karsh once said the fascination of greatness lies not in accomplishments or physical features, but in the essential element that created it.

 

"I call it the 'inward power,' " he wrote in Karsh Portfolio (U of T Press, 1967). "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."

 

In September 1992, the Karsh Photographic Studio finally closed its doors to allow the master more time to pursue books and international exhibitions, which he did right up until he died.

 

In 1997, he bid farewell to Ottawa and, along with wife Estrellita, a medical researcher, packed his bags and headed for Boston. Upon leaving, he presented a small collection of classic portraits to the Chateau Laurier, where his former home of 16 years is now known as the Karsh Suite.

 

The recipient of 17 honorary degrees and the only Canadian named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by the International Who's Who (he had photographed more than half of them), Karsh leaves behind a legacy for all the world.

 

His work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, New York's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House, La Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and many others.

 

The National Archives of Canada holds his complete collection, including negatives, prints and documents. His photographic equipment was donated to Ottawa's Museum of Science and Technology.

 

A private funeral for family will be held in Ottawa. A memorial service will be held at a later date.

 

STEPHEN THORNE

 

 

[brian_legere1]

I saw many of his famous portraits last year at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa.These famous original prints of some of the most influential people of the 20th century hang casually in the halls and cooridors of this grand hotel.Karsh used large format photography to capture the soul and essence of his subjects in a most powerful manner.It was very moving.

[wayne_campbell]

What camera did he use?

[tim_atherton2]

> What camera did he use?

 

Over a lifetime career like that? Many different ones.

 

Deardorffs in 8x10 and 4x5, TLR 4x5's are among others I have seen

 

tim

 

Here's a nice little LF Karsh story from another list:

 

One more story comes to mind. Once when I was in Karsh's Ottawa studio,

he showed me how he developed his 8x10 negatives by inspection. He used

Kodak desensitizer to reduce the chance of fogging.

 

I think he must have been the last photographer on earth to use that

product. Sales were down to a few bottles sold each year in Canada and

New York City (Where Karsh also had a small studio.) Finally, Kodak

discontinued making the product. I alerted Yousuf and he bought as many

bottles as he could find and all the rest we had at Kodak.

 

Several years went by and one day I got a frantic phone call from

Karsh's assistant. "We are down to our last bottle of desensitizer!" he

blurted out and Karsh grabbed the phone and said, "you have got to

help me." Well it was not possible for Kodak to make any more in the

USA since one of the ingredients was now banned by the EPA. But I did

some research and found a company in Switzerland that did still make the

ingredient and they were willing to run off a batch of Kodak desenstizer

just for Karsh. Kodak paid for it.

[jorge_gasteazoro5]

With such bad feelings Kodak generates everytime they discontinue a product they should print that story.....very nice Tim

[walter_glover]

Learning of the passing of Yousuf Karsh is the second sad

Karsh-related event I have experienced.

 

In the 1960's when it was first published I purchased a copy of

"Karsh Portfolio" - the book itself a magnificent production

printed by sheet-fed gravure and the pages shaved so that no

matter where you open the book it will always open on the

introductory page to one of the 48 portraits.

 

I was a teenager working on a newsfilm crew for a Sydney

(Australia) TV station when I bought the book. Sydney was not a

cross-roads of international diplomacy or performance in those

days but we did have our share of dignitaries and celebrities

pass through.

 

Each time we would be dispatched to film some arriving

glitterati, if they were in the book I would take it along in the hope

of an autograph. I had already been fortunate enough to acquire

the signatures of prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn and

conqueror of Mt Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary. I was now taking

the book to the University of Sydney where HRH the Prince

Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh was officiating. I had checked with the

minders who said that they would do whatever they could to

assist but that it may require leaving the book with them for

Phillip to sign later at his lodgings. I took the book back to the

news car and left it safely secured. Most of the Sydney media

bods knew of this daft kid and his book - it generated

considerable interest. When I returned to the car after the event I

found the window smashed and despite none of the Arriflex gear

having been disturbed, my book was gone. So much for

mythical Aussie mateship.

 

Kash set a style of formal, yet revealing portraiture. As good as

his interpretation of heads-of-state, both secular and sacred,

may have been I feel he was in fullest flight when working with

fellow artists. The back view of Pablo Casals playing his cello in

solitude facing a stone wall with a barred window was a pivotal

image in the development of my understanding of moving

outside the square of 'normal' portraiture. I can see Casals - I

can also hear him - in Karsh's photograph. Likewise, I can

sense the strength of the chiseblow in the hand of Sir Jacob

Epstein with the echo of that hand in the massive form behind

him. Then there are Robert Frost and Somerset Maugham, each

depicted as raconteur in mid-narrative in his own milieu.

 

I shall never get my stolen book back; it was a great loss. So too

is the death of Yousuf Karsh a great loss: not only will we never

get another Karsh but, sadly, portraiture will likely never regain

the aura, majesty and proficiency that the restrained probing of

the subject by the likes of a Karsh can portray.

 

Avedon, Penn, Newman, Sander, Beaton and Karsh, each in

their own style, have left us a great legacy in chronicling the

peers of the times whether they be dignitaries or itinerant

labourers. Their's is not the world of invasive denegrating

gossip magazine exposés - theworks are the product of time,

effort and understanding to venerate and display the dignity and

worth that exists in all of us - whoever we are, wherever we are

and whatever our lot.

 

I feel sure that when Karsh is granted that eternal rest in peace

and when the light perpetual shines upon him he will brighten it

further still with a stroke or two of ferricyanide.

 

Walter Glover

[nelson_leonard_photography]

<b>There is alot to be said about a "Man" and his "Signature on Life"</b>