Yousuf Karsh
(CANADIAN, 1908 - 2002)
Yousuf Karsh is the most renowned portrait photographer of our time. He has perceptively photographed the statesmen, artists, and literary and scientific figures that have shaped our lives in the 20th century. Known for his ability to transform “the human face into legend,” many of the portraits that he created have become virtually the image of the great man or woman they portray, whether Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, Georgia O’Keeffe or Helen Keller. In other words, “to experience a Karsh photograph is to feel in the presence of history itself.” His photographs are in major private and public collections throughout the world, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston holding the largest collection in the United States.
“My portrait of Winston Churchill changed my life. I knew after I had taken it that it was an important picture, but I could hardly have dreamed that it would become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography.”