Ottawa Citizen, Canada
Feb 28 2015
Library and Archives Canada acquires huge Malak Karsh collection
Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen
Malak Karsh’s vibrant photos of Ottawa tulips, Gatineau leaves and
Canada’s full glory are about to be preserved for future generations.
Library and Archives Canada will announce Sunday the purchase of more
than 200,000 photographic images from Malak’s vast collection of
transparencies, negatives and prints.
The images, captured between 1968 and 2001, include many colour photos
of Parliament Hill and the tulip festival, along with landscapes from
across the country. Other images feature Canadians at work in
agriculture, industry and the arts.
Library and Archives Canada has already acquired much of Malak’s
black-and-white photo collection.
The eldest of Malak’s four children, Sidney, said his late father
travelled the country hundreds of times, always with his camera at the
ready. “He specialized in finding the beauty of Canada,” Karsh, 68,
said in an interview Friday. “He wanted to make sure that Canadians
saw that beauty. … It was a lifelong passion for him.”
Malak, who died in November 2001 from leukemia, would have celebrated
his 100th birthday on Sunday.
Library and Archives Canada plans to digitize the Malak collection and
make some photos available to Canadians through its website.
Librarian and Archivist of Canada Guy Berthiaume called photography an
“integral and invaluable part” of Canada’s documentary heritage. At
least six of Malak’s images have appeared on Canadian stamps and
another — a picture of a log drive behind Parliament Hill — was
featured on the back on the now-defunct $1 bill.
The federal government paid $644,000 for the Malak collection.
Malak Karsh was born in the city of Mardin, in what is now
southeastern Turkey, only weeks before the Ottoman government began
the forced deportation of its Armenian Christian population in April
1915. The massive deportation, and accompanying massacres, killed more
than one million Armenians, who were regarded as an enemy within by
the Ottomans.
Malak survived the slaughter and immigrated in 1937 to Canada where he
learned photography from his older brother, Yousuf, a
much-sought-after portrait photographer. He used the name Malak to
distinguish himself from his famous brother — and decided to focus his
lens on the dramatic landscapes of his adopted homeland.
It was a decision prompted by his first visit to the Gatineau Hills.
“When I saw the beautiful autumn colours, I said, ‘That is what I am
going to be: I am going to be a photographer,’ ” Malak told an
interviewer in 1997. “If Canada is all as beautiful as the Gatineaus,
I am going to travel all over Canada.”
He established his own photographic studio on Sparks Street in April
1941 and hired a young assistant, Barbara Fraser, whom he married the
following year. Malak sold one of his cameras to pay for their
honeymoon.
Equipped with a German-made Hasselblad camera, Malak photographed much
of the country, but he had a special affinity for the national capital
region. “This is the only landscape that lets me take crocuses through
the snow,” he once said. “And in winter, the hoarfrost and trees here
transform our landscape into a fairyland.”
Malak captured log drives on the Ottawa River, the Parliament
buildings draped in snow, a tour boat emerging from the mist of Rideau
Falls, the ByWard Market brimming with produce and, of course, tulips.
In 1952, Malak approached the Ottawa Board of Trade with the idea of
starting a tulip festival — and a beloved Ottawa tradition was born.
“I have unlimited love for tulips,” he told one interviewer. “Every
year I say, ‘I have enough tulip pictures, I won’t take any more.’ But
each year, it doesn’t work.”
Malak continued to work after being afflicted with leukemia. He’d snap
pictures of nurses and doctors during visits to the hospital, and once
photographed a group of interns examining his gout-stricken feet. Only
days before his death, he walked to Parliament Hill from his home in
the Glebe to photograph a tree he admired.