A KARSH EXHIBIT OF YOUR OWN, FOR $1,800 A NIGHT
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By The Canadian Press | 5:33 AM
Halifax Chronicle Herald, Nova Scotia
July 18 2007
OTTAWA – For almost two decades, Yousef and Estrellita Karsh called
Suite 358 at the Chateau Laurier home.
Now the simple yet elegant, multiroom suite is home to the likes of
Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and George Bernard Shaw.
They are portraits, of course. Karsh portraits.
And on Tuesday no less than Estrellita Karsh herself was there to
reopen the newly refurbished apartment where she and her renowned
photographer husband lived and entertained between portrait sessions
with many of the greatest leaders, celebrities and cognoscenti of
the 20th Century.
"It was a wonderful apartment; we loved being there," Estrellita
Karsh said in an interview. "And, more than anything, we loved being
in the Chateau.
"They all became our family. A hotel, by its nature, is a transient
place. And we were there, permanently. So that made a huge difference
in the relationships with the staff. We were the Ma and Pa Kettle of
the hotel."
She hasn’t stayed in the suite since the couple moved out in 1998, but
she has often visited and says the "spirits" in the suite remain "very,
very good," much as they did the first time the couple walked in.
"It’s just one of those apartments where your heart leaps, you know
it’s ‘it.’ And we did know."
One’s heart might leap at the price: $1,800 a night to sleep with
the ghosts of greatness.
Virtually everybody who was anybody sought immortality through the
lenses of Karsh’s cameras.
Known worldwide as Karsh of Ottawa, his sixth floor studio at what is
now called the Fairmont Chateau Laurier became a waypoint for titans of
the 20th Century. And if they couldn’t come to him, Karsh went to them.
Kennedy, Castro, Hepburn, Einstein, Churchill, Mandela, Schweitzer,
Kruschev. Presidents and prime ministers. Kings and queens.
Scientists and doctors. Authors, composers and artists. The list
seems endless.
"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
the persecution Armenians endured and came to Canada in 1924 to live
with his photographer uncle in Sherbrooke, Que.
He dreamed of becoming a doctor but didn’t have the money for medical
school. After a brief apprenticeship his uncle sent him off to Boston
to study photography under eminent portraitist John H. Garo.