YOUSUF KARSH AT THE CANADIAN EMBASSY
By Louis Jacobson
Washington City Paper
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Aug 5 2009
Send a Letter to the Editor Yousuf Karsh, the Armenian-born Canadian
photographer, had a reputation for being overly respectful of his
clients, who were almost always famous, powerful, or both. But while
a centennial exhibition of 28 brooding, often pretentious images of
artists does little to dispel such critiques, Karsh drops scattered,
unexpected hints of a more playful mind at work. Karsh photographed
cellist Pablo Casals facing away from the camera, playing to a
wall whose stones, in the gloom, could be mistaken for heads in
an audience. Karsh’s photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright offers an
abundance of triangles and diagonals–hardly the forms you’d expect
in an image of the horizontal-minded prairie architect. The bristles
of the paintbrush in Andy Warhol’s hand distinctly mirror the strands
of his famous shock of hair. And Karsh’s image of Georgia O’Keefe
recapitulates the skulls, gnarled wood, and adobe walls familiar from
Alfred Stieglitz’s photographs of his wife, even as he undercuts the
reverence by seemingly peeking around the corner to gaze, distractedly,
out an open door.
THE EXHIBIT IS ON DISPLAY MONDAY TO FRIDAY FROM 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. TO
DEC. 18 AT THE CANADIAN EMBASSY, 501 PENNSYLVANIA AVE. NW. FREE. (202)
682-1740.