Yousuf Karsh (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002) was an Armenian-Canadian photographer, and one of the most famous and accomplished portrait photographers of all time.
Yousuf or Josuf (his given Armenian name was Hovsep) Karsh was born in Mardin, a city in the eastern Ottoman Empire (present Turkey). He grew up during a time when he was a child and he and his family witnessed the great famine of the period, costing the family the life of Yousuf’s sister, and the ensuing 1918 pandemic along with the atrocities and severely harsh measurements of mass deportation by the authorities on the Armenian minorities living in the Ottoman Empire, the so-called “the sick man of Europe”. He later wrote, “I saw relatives massacred; my sister died of starvation as we were driven from village to village.”
Speaking about his Photography, he was very powerful in using studio lights. He had Photographed many famous personalities all over the world during his reign in Photography. In all his photographs there was an essence for the person he has captured which is very much visible to us. He says ” My chief joy is to photograph the great in heart, in mind, and in spirit, whether they be famous or humble.”
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More Information about Yousuf Karsh.
Winston Churchill
© Yousuf Karsh
Pablo Picasso
© Yousuf Karsh
Ernest Hemingway
© Yousuf Karsh
George Bernard Shaw
© Yousuf Karsh
Jean Sibelius
© Yousuf Karsh
Albert Einstein
© Yousuf Karsh
W.H.Auden
© Yousuf Karsh
Jessye Norman
© Yousuf Karsh
General Dwight Eisenhower
© Yousuf Karsh
Martha Graham
© Yousuf Karsh
Helen Keller, with Polly Thompson
© Yousuf Karsh
Jacqueline Kennedy
© Yousuf Karsh
Grace Kelly
© Yousuf Karsh
Fidel Castro
© Yousuf Karsh
Alberto Giacometti
© Yousuf Karsh
Georgia O’Keeffe
© Yousuf Karsh
Joan Miró
© Yousuf Karsh
Jasper Johns
© Yousuf Karsh
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
© Yousuf Karsh
Frank Lloyd Wright
© Yousuf Karsh
Audrey Hepburn
© Yousuf Karsh
Humphrey Bogart
© Yousuf Karsh
Pablo Casal
© Yousuf Karsh
François Mauriac
© Yousuf Karsh
Paul Claudel
© Yousuf Karsh
Muhammad Ali
© Yousuf Karsh
Albert Schweitzer
© Yousuf Karsh
Thomas Cullen
© Yousuf Karsh
Mother Teresa
© Yousuf Karsh
Marian Anderson
© Yousuf Karsh
Vladimir Nabokov
© Yousuf Karsh
Robert Frost
© Yousuf Karsh
Man Ray
© Yousuf Karsh
Jacques Cousteau
© Yousuf Karsh
Alfred Hitchcock
© Yousuf Karsh
Peter Lorre
© Yousuf Karsh
Elizabeth Taylor
© Yousuf Karsh
Martin Luther King
© Yousuf Karsh
Andy Warhol
© Yousuf Karsh
Pope Pius XII
© Yousuf Karsh
Brigitte Bardot
© Yousuf Karsh
15 comments
I remember going to a Karsh exhibit. Every photo had a write up that told a great story about each. His story about the Churchill portrait is one of the most memorable stories in photography.
I agree, Churchill looks like a toddler who got his lollipop ripped from his hands, the perfect expression for the circonstances.
Admiring work by Yousuf Karsh. Thanks for sharing.
wow. what a portraits. Admired.
Beautiful. And, he didn’t capture these images with a modern snap, snap camera. He viewed the subject upside down on the ground glass, came out from under a dark cloth. loaded a film holder, pulled the dark slide and studied the person, face to face, not through a ground glass or viewfinder. He could get more tone out of the black and white process than anyone. Congratulations to this site. The images are spot on.
Superb portrait…. Master of portraits photography w/o doubt.
great photos guys! hmu with that kush
I met Karsh and have his autograph. I even have a very poor photo that I took of him in South Africa, but he was brilliant.
He’s pretty cool
Stunning work and collection . Thank you.
Inspirational for any photographer. He was one of the best.
The article weasels its way around in not calling Karsh one of the survivors of the ARMENIAN GENOCIDE apparently to appease pressure from Turkish trolls.
I Lived with Immortal Yousuf Karsh (Hovsep Qarshyan)*
I lived with Yousuf Karsh
Through my childhood memories.
Hearing my father’s praises
For Yousuf’s paintings
Shot by black and white films.
Then … I was studying and
Could not understand
My father’s love
For his gifted portraits.
Now I’m able to understand
Who, the famous Karsh was.
Karsh searched deep into
the features of each face
Intended to portray with
A magical grace
At odds with endless violence
Suffered by his race
At the hands of Seljuk Scimitars.
The faces were faces
Karsh could not change …
Yes, his photogenic lights
Lanced their hearts …
squeezed their hands
Without causing any scratch or
Spilling, any drop of blood.
Hence,
You can analyze colorful psyches by
Gazing silently into the curtains’
Amazing portraits,
Though, printed in black and white.
(C) Sylva Portoian, M.D.; FRCP.CH (UK)
Winner of the Carnegie poetry prize, 2009
from my 16th poetry collection,
“CHURCHILL at ARARAT with Sylva’s Ethereal Love songs” (2017)
May 24, 2013
Powerful poem Sylva. Thank you for sharing.
I got to study under him for 2 weeks at Ohio U