Biography

Yousuf Karsh (1908–2002) is recognized as one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century. Arriving in Canada in 1924 as an Armenian refugee, Karsh eventually settled in Ottawa. Over six decades, he mastered the art of portraiture and created a unique chronicle of his time through images of celebrated legends. To achieve both creative and commercial success, Karsh immersed himself in technical codes related to photographic technology, aesthetic codes from painting and art photography, and social codes to access elite society. A celebrity in his own right, he was an elegant and charming public figure, captivating audiences with compelling stories told in images and words. Karsh sought to capture, as he put it, the “elusive moment of truth,” revealing the essential nature of his subjects as reflected in their eyes, hands, and attitudes.

A Refugee Arrives

Yousuf (né Hovsep) Karsh was born on December 23, 1908, the eldest child of a middle-class Armenian family in Mardin, in what is now Turkey. Descendants of an ancient civilization, Western Armenians were ruled by the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. Karsh’s mother, Bahiyah Nakash, was the daughter of an engraver and had been educated at the Protestant-sponsored American Mission School. His father, Abel al-Massih Karsh, was a successful weaver and importer of specialty artisanal goods, such as spices, indigo, silks, and textiles acquired in markets on the Persian Gulf. Karsh and his siblings were raised speaking Arabic and confirmed in the Roman Catholic faith.

In 1915, when Karsh was seven years old, his family was entrapped by what is now known as the Armenian Genocide. As a largely Christian minority, Armenians were systemically targeted by the Ottoman government for starvation, persecution, forced deportation, or massacre, ultimately resulting in the deaths of over a million people. As a child, Karsh endured starvation and displacement and witnessed acts of violence, including against members of his own family. His father’s diverse heritage and Arabic speaking ability played a key role in the family’s survival. In 1922, authorities allowed the Karshes to flee by caravan to Syria, where they eventually settled in Aleppo, trying to rebuild their lives as displaced refugees.

As a measure to safeguard his future, in 1924, Karsh’s parents arranged for their son, then just fifteen, to move to Sherbrooke, Quebec, to live with his mother’s brother, Aziz George Nakash (1892–1976), a portrait photographer. Karsh was permitted to enter the country as part of a humanitarian initiative to reunite displaced Armenians with family members already in Canada.

Karsh departed from Beirut, Lebanon, crossing the Atlantic on the SS Versailles, and later quipped that he carried with him “only his good manners.” He arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, four weeks later, docking during a New Year’s Eve snowstorm. He could speak Armenian and Arabic fluently but knew little French and no English when he was interviewed by Canadian immigration officials. Karsh had never met his uncle, a thirty-two-year-old bachelor, who had travelled there to escort him to Sherbrooke. Leaving Halifax in early 1925, they set off by train, a journey of nearly one thousand kilometres through severe winter conditions.

After his arrival in Sherbrooke, Karsh enrolled in the local English-language high school, anglicizing his name to “Joe.” Despite the challenge of learning English—his fourth language after Armenian, Arabic, and French—he quickly formed friendships, including with the daughters of the mayor, who had been photographed by his uncle and who introduced Karsh to Canadian pastimes like ice skating.

“My University”

At the end of his first semester in Sherbrooke, Karsh began working in his uncle Nakash’s portrait studio, learning to use a large-format camera on a tripod, developing photographs exposed on glass-plate negatives, and printing in the darkroom. He also began taking his own photographs using the first portable camera: a Kodak Brownie. As Karsh later recalled, “I began to roam the countryside about Sherbrooke every weekend, developing the pictures I took myself. It was an excellent experience, and Uncle Nakash was a valuable and patient critic.”

Karsh’s earliest extant work is a picturesque landscape featuring children playing along a riverbank. The soft focus and atmospheric quality of this gentle scene exemplify the art photography style of the period, Pictorialism, which emulated classical genres and the painterly expression of fine art. Karsh gave this print to a classmate, who, without Karsh’s knowledge, entered it in a photo contest sponsored by the T. Eaton Company. The photograph won first prize and a sizable fifty dollars. Karsh “gave ten dollars to my friend and happily sent the rest to my parents in Aleppo, the first money I could send to them from Canada.”

With artistic encouragement and technical experience, Karsh committed to pursuing his passion for photography as a profession. In 1928, his uncle Nakash arranged for Karsh, now twenty, to further his studies as an assistant to John H. Garo (1870–1939), a distinguished portrait photographer based in Boston, Massachusetts, who was also part of the Armenian diaspora. Garo operated an elegant portrait studio by day and hosted a lively salon attended by leading cultural figures at night.

Garo had left Armenia at a young age and settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1885, before becoming a professional photographer. Widely known for his studio portraits and art photography, Garo was also a painter and actively participated in Pictorialist networks in the Boston region. He was familiar with the salon exhibition circuits both as an artist and as a jury member, and he closely studied other photographers, including members of the Photo-Secession movement, whose pieces were published in the art photography journal Camera Work.

Under Garo’s tutelage, Karsh expanded his camera skills, took classes at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and studied great masterworks of portraiture during visits to Boston’s museums and great libraries. Karsh also had the opportunity to study first-hand many painted portraits by classical masters, laying a foundation for his signature aesthetic choices: a perceptive psychological portrayal featuring a half-length format, prominent placement of the sitter’s hands, and objects symbolizing the sitter’s status, profession, or talent.

In addition to closely studying paintings and carefully mixing chemicals in the darkroom, Karsh learned an essential skill during his apprenticeship with Garo: how to photograph and socially interact with prominent people. Karsh observed how Garo received his subjects at the studio, relaxing and directing them during portrait sittings. It was also Karsh’s responsibility to assist with the smooth operation of the animated salon sessions in the evenings as bartender. This social environment significantly shaped the direction of Karsh’s work, fostering his ease around famous personalities and his confidence in directing them.

Garo opened Karsh’s artistic world and taught him advanced photographic processes. Karsh later reflected, “Garo taught me something more important than technique alone—he taught me to see, and to remember what I saw. He also prepared me to think for myself and evolve my own distinctive interpretations.” Karsh’s mentorship with Garo ended in 1931 when his temporary work papers expired, requiring him to return to Canada. What had been intended to be a six-month apprenticeship had lasted three years: “Garo’s salon was my university, a noble institution at which to have been permitted to study.”

Mastering Light and Shadow

After three years apprenticing with John H. Garo in Boston and a brief stint working at his uncle Nakash’s Sherbrooke studio, Karsh chose Ottawa for his portrait practice. As the seat of government, Ottawa promised a steady stream of clients from diplomatic, societal, and cultural circles. Initially, Karsh worked for established local portrait photographer John Powis. In 1933, despite the worsening economic conditions of the Great Depression, Karsh took over Powis’s Sparks Street lease to launch his own stylish but fledgling studio.

Less than ten years after arriving in Canada as a young refugee fleeing the Armenian Genocide, Karsh was proficient at the pictorial, technical, and social codes needed to become a portrait master. Several key factors contributed to his success during these early years: foremost was his exposure to dramatic lighting techniques and his new understanding of the photographer’s role as director of scenes through his work with Ottawa’s amateur theatre community.

Rather than use natural light and large-format glass negatives, as Garo had done, Karsh adopted a more modern approach: he worked with nitrate film negatives and used the artificial lighting favoured in fashion and film photography, such as the portraits published in Vanity Fair magazine. In 1933, Karsh—who may have been introduced to artificial studio lighting by his uncle Nakash or John Powis—began volunteering to photograph productions at the Ottawa Little Theatre. This admission into the world of theatre was both strategic and significant, providing him with the opportunity to study the performances’ dramatic lighting and complex compositions.

In contrast to Garo’s soft modulations of light and shadow in the Pictorialist tradition, Karsh’s photographs of the 1930s began to feature a theatricality, with sharper definitions and stronger contrasts. Karsh befriended Madge Macbeth, author and founding member of the Ottawa Little Theatre. In a 1936 portrait, Karsh demonstrates his mastery of theatrical light and shadow by posing Macbeth as a silhouette enveloped in the filigree pattern cast by backlit ironwork. This work exemplifies Karsh’s early commissions and his signature approach to portraying mature women as consequential agents of change.

In his first season photographing the productions of the Ottawa Little Theatre, Karsh also formed a friendship with one of its leading ladies, Solange Gauthier. “Something more important than my introduction to incandescent lighting came out of the Little Theatre,” Karsh later reflected regarding his meeting with Solange. “My first night there I was ushered into the dressing room of the leading lady, the spirited and independent Solange Gauthier…. From our marriage some years later, to her death in 1961, she was a source of encouragement, understanding, and inspiration.”

Solange left her job as secretary to a member of Parliament from Quebec to become Karsh’s studio manager in 1936 and his wife in 1939. Born in France in 1900, Solange had immigrated to Canada with her mother. Eight years older than Karsh and previously married, the gregarious and free-spirited Solange was a well-connected and creative individual in her own right. She was an important muse and a keen business manager, focused on all aspects of promotion and publication, as well as the efficient running of Karsh’s studio. Although she said that it was her job to see that the bills went out and the money came in, she also employed her considerable skills in social charm, prepared textual narratives recounting Karsh’s important portrait sittings, and generated promotion and publicity. She was also an invaluable counterpoint to Karsh’s sometimes anxious perfectionism.

As an immigrant and visible minority who spoke English with a heavy accent, Karsh valued the opportunity to form social connections within the welcoming and socially fluid creative community of the Ottawa Little Theatre. His connection to one of the company’s leading players, the young Viscount Duncannon, Frederick Ponsonby, led to an introduction to Ponsonby’s parents, Governor General Vere Ponsonby, Earl of Bessborough, and his wife, Roberte Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough. Lord and Lady Bessborough were the founders and honorary patrons of the Dominion Drama Festival, an annual spring competition featuring performances from regional theatre companies across Canada. Karsh’s charismatic personality and impeccable manners accelerated his promotion to official photographer of the festival’s productions, and he was soon asked to produce the couple’s official portrait.

A Widening Sphere

Karsh’s connection to the creative circle of Ottawa’s theatre productions provided him with more than a life partner and an opportunity to master dramatic lighting. It also opened important channels to circulate his work to a national audience. In early 1933, while Karsh was photographing productions of the Dominion Drama Festival, he was introduced to Adele M. Gianelli, social editor of Canada’s weekly illustrated magazine, Saturday Night. Founded in Toronto in 1897, Saturday Night had become, under the direction of its editor, B.K. Sandwell, a leading journal of writings on politics, literature, and the arts, with a strong emphasis on Canada’s distinct cultural perspective. Gianelli advocated for Karsh’s work to be featured in the magazine, garnering the support of Sandwell.

For Karsh, Saturday Night was an ideal venue for both his artistic and his business objectives. The journal’s large, luxurious format, printed on coated paper, introduced his work to a national audience, increasing portrait bookings at his studio. From that point onward, he worked closely with Sandwell to coordinate the publication of his best work.

By the mid-1930s, Karsh was rapidly becoming Ottawa’s leading photographer, building important connections within the city’s creative community. With patience and promotion, he took on more commissions for various purposes, from passport photos and business headshots to portraits commemorating special events, including key moments in the social calendars of the city’s elite.

Karsh’s studio, which he had taken over after John Powis’s retirement in 1933, was located on the top floor of 130 Sparks Street, later named the Hardy Arcade. The fashionable Art Deco–style building provided ample natural light and was situated along one of Ottawa’s busiest streets, one block from Parliament Hill. Karsh’s work attracted high-profile patrons, notably Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was photographed by Karsh at his office and home multiple times. King also commissioned Karsh to create portraits of visiting dignitaries as part of Canada’s historical record on the world stage.

In August 1936, King arranged for Karsh to photograph the visit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first American president to come to Canada, and his son James Roosevelt. Karsh later recounted how a fortunate blend of skill and luck allowed him the opportunity to secure his desired portrait during a crowded press conference: “Later in the afternoon, President Roosevelt appeared with his son James, Lord Tweedsmuir and the Canadian Prime Minister. They consented to be photographed and posed very stiffly and militarily for me. I pretended to take the picture, and thanked them, whereupon they relaxed, and Lord Tweedsmuir began to tell one of the Scottish stories for which he was famous. As they listened, at ease, I took the picture.”

In addition to portraits commissioned for official government business and the historical record, Karsh attracted important patrons, including members of Parliament, ambassadors, and touring performers. Among them were Myra Armour, wife of American diplomat Norman Armour, and Paul Robeson, an actor and bass-baritone concert artist. After the onset of the Second World War in 1939, the regular appearance of Karsh’s portraits of political leaders, socialites, and theatrical stars in the pages of Saturday Night was enhanced with an expanding gallery of wartime bureaucrats accompanied by text that outlined their roles in wartime operations. Sandwell was also instrumental in arranging Karsh’s first solo exhibition, which was presented at the flagship Simpson’s department store in Toronto in June 1938.

Karsh also fostered opportunities to exhibit his prints through the prestigious art photography salon circuit. He was keenly aware of his mentor Garo’s energetic participation in the salon movement as a way of accruing credibility as a photographic artist. Separate from the commercial photographic realm, the salon movement was composed of dedicated and talented amateur photographers who shared, critiqued, and displayed their works in meetings, lectures, and competitive salons. Importantly for Karsh, participating members featured art photographs reflective of their modern machine-age world, preferring sharp-focus images over soft-focus romanticism.

Karsh’s avid study of leading photographers such as Edward Steichen (1879–1973) and his exposure to contemporary art movements permeated his self-directed salon work. Some of his salon entries represented his portraiture with an emphasis on sharply delineated contrasts, such as the 1938 portrait of fellow photographer Johan Helders (1888–1956) studying a print in natural light. Other works were experimental and reflected Karsh’s awareness of and interest in surrealist currents and combination printing. Elixir, 1938, features nude studies of Solange seemingly trapped within a bottle. Although he had limited time to step away from paid portrait sittings, he submitted artistic photographs to national and international salons, earning him membership as an associate of the Royal Photographic Society in 1938.

On December 30, 1941, Karsh made a portrait that would launch him toward international fame. King arranged for Karsh to photograph British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the Speaker’s chamber moments after his historic wartime speech to members of the Canadian Senate and House of Commons. As he prepared his large camera and lights, Karsh requested that Churchill remove his cigar from his lips. He refused, and Karsh took the famous exposure just after snatching the cigar away, capturing the prime minister’s indignant and belligerent facial expression.

Karsh later remarked, “The world’s reception of that photograph—which it was said epitomized the indomitable spirit of the British people—changed my life.” The iconic portrait was immediately published widely: it came to define the face of the Allied effort during the Second World War and became one of Karsh’s most reproduced works almost overnight.

Chronicler of His Time

Karsh’s sudden celebrity following the publication of the 1941 Churchill portrait launched a remarkable career spanning the next five decades. He began to see his work as an evolving collective portrait of his time. From 1942 until the close of his studio in 1992, Karsh photographed leading figures of the twentieth century, including heads of state, royalty, film stars, authors, artists, and scientists.

His name even became a verb when Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery (commander of the Allied ground forces during the D-Day invasion of German-occupied Western Europe) remarked after his 1946 portrait session that he had been “Karshed.” Montgomery’s turn of phrase implied that being photographed by Karsh was akin to joining a pantheon of significant figures, all immortalized by his signature elegant and elevating style.

Karsh considered his work to be a collective portrait, a historical chronicle of his time. The idea of creating an enduring record of important personalities was popularized by nineteenth-century French photographer Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (1820–1910), known as Nadar, who conceived of a galerie contemporaine featuring leading figures as a portrait of one’s own time. Curator David Travis further cites such examples as The Gallery of Illustrious Americans (1850) by Mathew Brady (c.1823–1896) and Men of Mark (1913) by Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966). While Karsh’s concept of assembling a collective portrait in photographs was not unique, the mass circulation of his images through books, magazines, and exhibitions over the next fifty years surpassed any precedent.

What made Karsh’s approach distinctive and set a template for his later work was the connection between the allure of the portrait and the photographer’s own narrative of the sitting. By linking Winston Churchill’s portrait to the story of Karsh’s own act of removing the cigar, image and text worked together to amplify the viewer’s sense of proximity to greatness. Karsh himself became a celebrity through the publication of sumptuous galleries of his famous sitters, which included biographical notes and his own engaging anecdotes about the portrait sessions.

Karsh’s first portfolio, Faces of Destiny, was published in 1946, just after the Second World War. It featured seventy-three full-page portraits, each accompanied by Karsh’s narrative detailing the sitter’s position and role in contemporary life. The edition included recent portraits taken during Karsh’s international travels. In 1943, following Prime Minister King’s instruction to the Canadian embassy in London, and supplied with an advance from Saturday Night editor B.K. Sandwell, Karsh secured passage by convoy across the perilous Atlantic waters. As he explained, “It was in London that I started the practice which I continue to this day of ‘doing my homework,’ of finding out as much as I can about each person I am to photograph.”

With assistance from staff at Canada House, Karsh scheduled important sittings during his two-month stay, including with notable figures such as Lord Beaverbrook, William Maxwell Aitken (the Canadian British newspaper magnate and wartime supply chain commander of aircraft production); literary figures such as George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells; and members of the British royal family. Also included in the portfolio were portraits from Karsh’s 1945 commission by LIFE magazine to photograph political delegates attending the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco.

Karsh would receive even further recognition for his work. In 1947, the Canadian Citizenship Act came into effect, establishing a distinct identity for Canadian citizens, no longer considered a subclass of British subjects. In a special ceremony officiated by the Supreme Court marking the new act, Karsh was chosen to represent Ontario, and in recognition of his contributions to Canada’s historical record, he received his official certificate designating him as Citizen No. 10.

On Assignment

By the end of the 1940s, with his international reputation firmly established, Karsh began to pursue photographic projects beyond commissioned studio portraits. Throughout his long career, he had accepted various commercial assignments, from photographing models for Burkholder Furs in the 1930s to creating advertising images for consumer products such as cigarettes, cars, liquor, watches, and cameras, as well as for government bodies.

In 1950, Karsh accepted an invitation from Atlas Steel, the largest producer of stainless steel in the British Commonwealth, to create a series of images depicting steelworkers in the foundry based in Welland, Ontario. He later remarked that an Atlas Steel representative had encouraged him to undertake the assignment by suggesting that after years of glorifying the prominent, he should turn his camera to “glorify the humble ones of the earth.” Karsh approached the project cinematically, touring the operation to find ideal settings while “casting” among the workers he observed. He photographed activities such as pouring steel, roll grinding, hot strip, and coiling processes, staging one or two workers within the monumental industrial space. Where he could not bring his photographic equipment due to safety concerns, he later created composite negatives to achieve the best possible composition of the foreground figures and background machinery.

As with his portraits of illustrious sitters, Karsh aimed to ennoble the working men and dignify their labour. He received independent recognition for his editorial and commercial work in 1950 from the Art Directors Club of Chicago and in 1955 from the Art Directors Club of Montreal. For Karsh, the success of the Atlas Steel assignment opened doors to further commercial and promotional projects.

In 1952, following the success of his first book, Faces of Destiny, and his commission for Atlas Steel, Karsh was approached by Maclean’s to create iconic “portraits” of Canada’s key cities, highlighting important industries and urban modernization. In 1953, the agreement was extended to include an additional six essays. Karsh collaborated closely with the editors at Maclean’s to develop shooting scripts in advance and arrange access to specific locales and events.

The project appealed to Karsh, giving him an opportunity to photograph life in Canada as he saw it and to work with a smaller, more portable camera like his Rolleiflex. He was also aware of the growing success of his younger brother Malak Karsh (1915–2001) in the evolving genre of documentary photography. Notable examples of this new field included photographic essays documenting America’s Great Depression by Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), Walker Evans (1903–1975), Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971), and others, as well as photo stories produced by the respected National Film Board of Canada photography unit.

Freed from the studio, Karsh used the Maclean’s Canadian City project to explore new compositions and disjunctions of scale to convey a sense of monumentality in the depiction of the everyday. Of the estimated eight thousand photographs taken by Karsh for this project, Maclean’s published about three hundred in pictorial essays between November 15, 1952, and February 15, 1954.

The Canadian City series achieved Karsh’s goal of mastering the photo essay format through his visual storytelling talent, as applied to various documentary subjects, such as street scenes, folk traditions, farming, resource extraction, and manufacturing. In particular, he was attracted to architecture: the modern vocabulary of industrial structures and the chance to use built forms to manipulate scale. Karsh depicted Canada’s increasingly multicultural population, capturing Sikh millworkers and Chinese shopkeepers in British Columbia and Indigenous patients in an Edmonton hospital. He also portrayed the evidence of regional socio-economic disparity, featuring Saint John, New Brunswick, as a depressed relic of its nineteenth-century shipbuilding heyday and highlighting the hardships of Newfoundland’s mining community.

In his portrayal of modern Canada through its contemporary citizens, urban environments, natural resource industries, and surrounding scenic spots, Karsh applied his established methods of prior research and iconic composition to fulfill a triumphant economic narrative. The Canadian City series also provided Karsh with a sabbatical of sorts, affording him the time to observe life outside the studio and create a visual record of his own experiences. Ultimately, he was celebrating the heroic in the everyday.

In Search of Greatness

By the end of the 1950s, Yousuf Karsh was a household name, known for his iconic portraits seen by millions in widely circulated illustrated magazines. In 1959, these were compiled into a volume titled Portraits of Greatness, a new type of photography book, folio-sized and featuring high-quality printed images alongside polished biographical information and anecdotal texts on the facing pages.

The title, Portraits of Greatness, highlighted the elevated stature of the book’s subjects. For Karsh, greatness was linked to qualities of goodness and talent, and was distinct from the celebrity portraiture prevalent in movie idol magazines and tabloids. As a portrait artist, he sought to capture the essence of the preeminent figures of his time. Over the years, Karsh had received numerous queries from aspiring photographers seeking tips on how to replicate his style. Remarkably, he provided his exact equipment and darkroom specifications at the end of the volume. In this seemingly generous act, Karsh affirmed his belief in the portrait as a record of an event, a social moment in which he elicited an elusive truth.

In the introduction to the book, Karsh writes, “Here, in these pages, are some portraits of the gifted, the harvest of a long search. I hope they may bring my subjects a little closer to those who view them.“ Portraits of Greatness, along with the popular travelling exhibition that followed, aimed to uplift humanity through images of its best exemplars. The large volume felt hefty in the reader’s lap, connecting the space of their own body to the space of each portrait. The sense of proximity between the reader’s life and that of the depicted subject was heightened by the monumental scale of the celebrated figure within the frame.

The wide variety in Karsh’s work was the result of the strategic scheduling of portrait sittings in locations around the world where his illustrious subjects lived and worked. The price he paid for this bounty, accumulated over three decades, was chronic exhaustion. The demands of the constant travel, the physical and psychological strain of conducting portrait sittings, and the maintenance of a high volume of production in the darkroom for various commissions were enormous. Furthermore, Karsh was the public face of a large studio operation and a celebrity in his own right, dedicating his time to promoting his projects through magazine and television interviews.

Behind the scenes, Solange Karsh managed the business side of the studio, as well as arranging sittings and travel logistics and serving as the key liaison with museums and galleries. She travelled constantly with Karsh, fostering the pre-sitting social dynamic and taking the notes that would later become the basis for printed anecdotes. The Ottawa studio staff included a secretary/archivist, an expert printer, and assistants to pack, transport, and set up bulky photographic equipment. Beyond the studio, press agents in Europe and North America managed the flow of requests for new sittings and fine prints of Karsh portraits.

As production of Portraits of Greatness concluded, both spouses faced health crises. Karsh collapsed from a serious heart attack while working in Washington, D.C., requiring weeks of recovery in the hospital before returning to Ottawa. During his recovery, Solange was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. They focused their efforts on one final collaboration, Karsh’s memoir, In Search of Greatness: Reflections of Yousuf Karsh, with Solange preparing the text in the last months of her life. The 1962 book, which features a portrait of Karsh by celebrated fashion photographer Irving Penn (1917–2009), closely chronicles Solange’s death the previous year, and the text, a lively recounting of his rags-to-riches journey, interactions with notable people, and philosophical and practical reflections on portrait making, remained the definitive narrative of Karsh’s life and career through to his death in 2002.

After Solange’s death, work was Karsh’s solace. But while photographing Chicago-based physician and medical columnist Dr. Walter Alvarez in 1962, he met Alvarez’s talented medical researcher and writer, Estrellita Nachbar. As Newsweek later quipped, “Something more than the camera clicked.” After their wedding later that year, Estrellita became a devoted partner in the studio’s operation, managing major projects and working closely with Karsh during portrait sittings to help put sitters at ease.

Their partnership coincided with growing interest from museums in featuring photographic exhibitions. Influential curators such as Beaumont Newhall, Edward Steichen, and Nathan Lyons in the United States, and later James Borcoman at the National Gallery of Canada, acquired and exhibited photographs through newly established museum departments dedicated to the art form. Recognizing this expanding phenomenon, Karsh saw a significant opportunity for his audience to view his exquisitely produced prints in person rather than only in books and magazines.

New Perspectives

Following the success of the travelling version of Portraits of Greatness, Karsh was invited to serve as photographic advisor for Canada’s Expo 67 world’s fair in Montreal, where millions saw his prints featured in Men Who Make Our World.  The exhibition was immediately reprised in early 1968 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts before touring museums in the United States and Europe. Karsh’s subsequent appointment as photographic advisor for Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, concluded with the exhibition travelling to Australia.

In his role as photographic advisor to Osaka’s Expo 70, Karsh travelled across Japan to create portraits of prominent business leaders, artists, performers, and Nobel laureates considered “treasured by the entire nation.” The Japanese concept of living legends as honoured citizens resonated deeply with Karsh and inspired his next project, a published portfolio of notable Canadians.

A lavish coffee table book, Karsh Canadians, 1978, published by the University of Toronto Press, featured seventy-nine portraits arranged alphabetically, each accompanied by his customary commentary. The portfolio served as Karsh’s love letter to the nation that had welcomed him and was dedicated “to the people of Canada and to my uncle, George Nakash, who brought me here.” The book’s introduction includes Karsh’s recounting of his arrival in Canada in 1924 as a refugee and his journey to “becoming” as a portrait master.

In addition to portraits from the 1940s and 1950s, Karsh included photographs of figures significant to contemporary Canadians. His portrait of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, for example, shows the newly elected leader in a leather jacket instead of a formal suit, signalling a maverick tenure to come. Karsh recalled, “The new head of government was very relaxed, very natural and, above all, candid…. The voters already had found him compelling and charismatic but not yet controversial.”

By the end of the 1970s, as Karsh entered his sixties, his status as one of the great masters of twentieth-century photography was firmly established. Karsh had photographed and enjoyed the camaraderie many of the photographic giants of his era, such as Edward Steichen, Jacques Lartigue (1894–1986), Man Ray (1890–1976), Berenice Abbott (1898–1991), and Ansel Adams (1902–1984), as well as photo-based artists such as Andy Warhol (1928–1987). However, the practice of photographic portraiture had shifted away from his trademark style. Classical, staged portraiture embodying social or individual truths was replaced by a greater interest in subjective interpretations, which Museum of Modern Art curator Nathan Lyons would call “social landscape” photography.

As Karsh continued his practice in later years, younger artists exploring portraiture studied his distinctive style while interrogating the practice itself. Photographers positioned themselves along a continuum between revelation and concealment, between direct observers and constructors of fiction.

Later Years

As Karsh grew older, his scheduled portrait sittings and extensive travels diminished. In 1973, he moved his studio from the Hardy Arcade at 130 Sparks Street to a suite of rooms on the sixth floor of the Château Laurier, Ottawa’s grand hotel opposite Parliament Hill. As author Kevin Holland observes, “The arrangement provided the Karsh Studio with a prestigious and highly accessible address, and gave Canadian National’s flagship hotel a prestigious tenant.” Karsh had become a celebrity in his own right, appearing on television shows and in documentaries. A born flâneur and popular local figure, he was a familiar presence in Ottawa’s Parliament District and the lobby of the Château Laurier during his daily walks.

In his eighties, Karsh continued to satisfy the public’s appetite for formal portraits of notable individuals and to collaborate on retrospective exhibitions of his work organized by major cultural institutions. In 1983, the International Center of Photography in New York hosted a retrospective of Karsh’s career featuring lesser-known portraits from his assignment work in addition to well-known portraits. The National Gallery of Canada prepared a major exhibition, Karsh: The Art of the Portrait, in 1989, marking the institution’s move to a new building designed by Canadian architect Moishe Safdie. Karsh’s portfolio American Legends was published in 1992 and included many new works, such as a colour portrait of American soprano Jessye Norman, and he worked on retrospective publishing projects like Karsh: A Sixty-Year Retrospective (1996), which was later re-released as a revised edition, Karsh: A Biography in Images (2003).

Over his lifetime, Karsh received numerous honorary doctorates and the Canada Council Medal in 1969; he was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1975 and was named a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1990. Perhaps the most fitting honour was being listed in The International Who’s Who 1998–99 (1998) as one of the one hundred most influential figures of the twentieth century. The only photographer and only Canadian among the distinguished selection, Karsh had made portraits of more than half of the honourees.

In anticipation of the closure of his studio, his lifetime legacy was transferred to the then National Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada) beginning in 1987. The acquisition included Karsh’s creative output from the founding of his studio, comprising negatives, prints, and colour transparencies, as well as his business papers, publishing projects, artwork, personal correspondence, scrapbooks, awards, and honours. Karsh’s photographic equipment was acquired by the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

In 1992, the Karsh Studio closed permanently, and Yousuf and Estrellita Karsh retired to Boston, Massachusetts, returning to the city that had been so instrumental in the formation of his life and work. At age ninety-three, Karsh died on July 13, 2002; he is buried in Ottawa’s Notre Dame Cemetery.

In the years following her husband’s death until her own in 2025, Estrellita sponsored multiple hospital and museum initiatives in his name. In 2003, the city of Ottawa established the Yousuf and Malak Karsh Photography Award to recognize a mid-career local artist for their outstanding body of work and significant contribution to the artistic discipline in a photo/lens-based medium. Karsh’s work continues to be studied and exhibited internationally and supported by the website Karsh.org—led by Karsh’s longtime assistant, Curator and Director Jerry Fielder—which serves as an authoritative and comprehensive source about Karsh.

Karsh continues to be honoured, extending his earthly renown. In 2013, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada named a small planet in honour of Yousuf and Malak Karsh jointly, and in 2015, the International Astronomical Union named a fifty-eight-kilometre-wide crater on Mercury after Yousuf Karsh. Fittingly, the “portrait” of the Karsh crater features his signature theatrical balance of light and shadow.