THE LIFE OF YOUSUF KARSH
By Maria Tippett
House of Anansi Press
Embassy Magazine, Canada
play=story&full_path=/2007/october/10/karsh/
O ct 10 2007
There were few unelected people so inextricably a part of Canadian
politics, government, foreign affairs and Ottawa life as Yousuf Karsh.
>From his Sparks Street studio to his Château Laurier suite the famous
photographer and his first wife Solange, who died in 1961, and his
second wife, Estrellita (below, right), made an indelible mark on the
lives of world leaders and ordinary Canadians through his amazingly
stylized black and white pictures. He really had it all: he could be
as superficial as Life Magazine, which did publish his work, and as
soulful as American artist Georgia O’Keefe, whom he once photographed
(top, right).
Cultural historian Maria Tippett’s new book The Life of Yousuf Karsh
captures the depth and the superficiality, along with the wisdom,
the humor and pain of Karsh. Making her own writing transparent, she
brings the exceptional Armenian-Canadian photographer back to life
for a whole new generation. And with her engaging Karsh anecdotes are
several dozen Karsh photos-several of them rarely seen, many of them
worthy of a long gaze.
Iconic though he is and was in his own lifetime, Karsh was hardly
a lapdog of Canadian politicians, who believed his photos could be
counted on to enhance their agendas. Their ease with Karsh came partly
because he could always be counted on to produce a posed photo. There
were no candids in the style of France’s Henri Cartier-Bresson. There
were few surprises.
And then in 1952 when Maclean’s magazine asked Karsh to provide a photo
tour of Canada for the grand fee of $1,500 a picture plus expenses,
it turned out that not all the pictures were postcard material.
"There were…some marvelous exceptions," writes Ms. Tippett. "The
bone-chilling photograph of a child in an iron lung at the ‘Sick
Kids’ hospital in Toronto. The stark image of an unidentified woman
recovering from tuberculosis at an Edmonton hospital." There were
photos of Canada’s poor and infirm; photos that showed the desperate
situation of Canada’s First Nations Peoples.
Not all white Canadians appreciated Karsh’s view of Canada.
"In response to Karsh’s photo essay on Edmonton, one [Maclean’s]
reader asked, ‘Is the population made up entirely of Indians, Eskimos
and Orientals?’"
But it was the dining habits of the photographer and his wife Solange
while they were working in Prince Edward Island that got him into hot
water with the premier and saw Karsh attacked in the House of Commons.
The Karshes sat down to a dreadful meal at a
P.E.I. government-subsidized restaurant hotel, according to the
Maclean’s report. The dinner had begun with a seafood cocktail that had
neither sauce nor lemon and was not fresh. The jellied consomme that
followed had lumps of commercial gelatin floating in the broth. And
the rare beef tenderloin was not only less that one-quarter of an
inch thick but was overdone. It was the potatoes Florentine that
came in for the most criticism. When they were placed before Karsh,
he buried his face in his hands. Equally disgusted, Solange offered
to write a pamphlet for the premier, Walter Jones, on One Hundred
Ways to Cook Potatoes.
"The premier responded by suggesting that there was only one way to
cook a potato and that was to boil it."
The verbal food fight that ensued had the Conservative MP for Queens,
P.E.I. standing up in the Commons to denounce Karsh as "a doubtful
Canadian." Peterborough Examiner editor Robertson Davies came to
Karsh’s defence by writing, "We are all foreigners, in some way or
other, in Canada."
Mr. Davies was right on two counts. We are all foreigners here,
and Karsh was an especially worthy one.
–Boundary_(ID_Bjg8rJZZ2S1gyDx9N/v7Xg)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
