Portrait in Light and Shadow; The Life of Yousuf Karsh

by Maria Tippett

• ISBN13: 9780300136500
• ISBN10: 0300136501
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2008-02-20
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Yousuf Karsh is acknowledged to be the twentieth century's leading portrait photographer. His iconic images of Bogart, Hemingway, Churchill, the Kennedys, Auden, Castro, Einstein, the Clintons, Khrushchev, Casals, and Elizabeth II inhabit the mind's eye of anyone familiar with photographic history. A refugee from the ethnic cleansing of Turkish Armenians in 1916, Karsh made his home in Boston and Ottawa but travelled the globe during his sixty-year career, photographing political leaders, celebrities, monarchs, and movie stars. He died in 2002, aged 94. He left a legacy of 50,000 portraits. This is the first biography, written with help from his family and colleagues and based on the Karsh archive in Ottawa. Its publication marks Karsh's centenary in 2008, when retrospective exhibitions are scheduled in a number of locations in North America, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Boston Public Library, and Rhode Island School of Design. The book reproduces sixty of Karsh's most celebrated portraits, and reveals the technique behind the camera and the brilliant mastery of the photographer.

Author Biography

Maria Tippett is a member of the Faculty of History at Cambridge University.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. X
Preface	p. XV
The Making of the Man	p. 1
Beginnings in Armenia	p. 3
Welcome to Canada	p. 21
The Apprentice	p. 39
Joe Goes to Ottawa	p. 55
Court Photographer	p. 77
Marriage	p. 102
The Crowning of a Career	p. 125
Annus Mirabilis	p. 127
Mission to Britain	p. 152
On Assignment	p. 175
Faces of Destiny	p. 203
Back to Europe	p. 226
Branching Out	p. 249
Chasing Shadows	p. 276
The Living Legend	p. 307
An End and a Beginning	p. 309
Apotheosis	p. 338
The Legacy	p. 366
Acknowledgements	p. 379
Selected Publications	p. 383
Notes	p. 387
Index	p. 411
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