THE ARTIC PRESENTS: YOUSUF KARSH: REGARDING HEROES EXHIBITION
TAXI Design Network
5&monthview=0&month=8&year=2008
Aug 18 2008
NY
Yousuf Karsh’s portraits are instantly recognizable. Ernest Hemingway,
Georgia O’Keeffe, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Marian
Anderson, true visual icons of the 20th century, each sat before his
photographic lens.
This master portraitist, however, came from humble beginnings. As a
teenager the Armenian Karsh fled his native Turkey to live first in
Syria and then in Canada with his photographer uncle. Always connected
with traditional photographic methods, he honed his skills first as
an apprentice in Boston from 1928 to 1931 and then in his own studio
in Ottawa from 1932 until 1992.
In 1941, his portrait of Winston Churchill immediately earned him an
international reputation. The image exemplified "the roaring lion"
standing alone against the fascists that had overrun continental
Europe. His fame was further enhanced with state commissions of
political and military leaders during WWII, and his renown continued
to skyrocket after the war and through the early 1960s when he began
adding writers, actors, artists, musicians, scientists, statesmen,
and celebrities to his portfolio of accomplished individuals.
To mark the centenary of his birth, this retrospective will display
Karsh’s best portrait subjects in the prints he himself preferred. The
100 photographs in the exhibition are drawn from a set of over 200
master prints given to the museum as a promised gift by his widow,
Estrellita Karsh.
The exhibition’s fully illustrated catalogue, written by exhibition
curator David Travis and issued by Boston publisher David R. Godine,
traces Karsh’s artistic development and reassesses his place in the
history of photography.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
