Jessye Norman April 4, 1990

In 1990, Karsh photographed American soprano Jessye Norman. She faces the camera in regal splendour, a serene and confident woman, her powerful frontal pose filling the frame. Arguably Karsh’s greatest portrait in colour, it is also significant as a collaboration between photographer and performer, a powerful visual statement of individual and racial emancipation. Karsh photographs Norman at nearly full length, emerging from shadows as she directs her attention to the camera and, beyond that, the eventual viewer. She commands the entirety of the visual space as a declarative act—“I am”— laying claim to her right to occupy it.

Indelibly associated with the dramatic tonal range of black-and-white portrait photography, Karsh also worked with colour film throughout his career. He was regularly commissioned to provide colour portraits for illustrated magazines, one of the key channels for distributing his images. Although he accepted colour portrait commissions, he did so sparingly: it was his preference, by training and temperament, to seek a more psychologically powerful portrait defined by an infinite monochrome palette rather than the bravura of colour to replicate the range of human vision.

Posing for Karsh, Norman addresses our gaze as her individual persona rather than as an operatic character. The singer is backlit, radiating soft light around her; her nearly full-length figure creates a triangular brocaded composition evocative of the richly patterned textiles in the work of Vienna Secessionist painter Gustav Klimt (1862–1918). For her portrait sitting with Karsh, Norman donned this magnificently brocaded garment that she had worn a few weeks earlier during her performance on March 18, 1990, singing gospel spirituals with fellow soprano Kathleen Battle at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Norman’s powerful presence is amplified by the glowing aura that surrounds her, announcing her mastery as an unparalleled performer. Karsh’s conception of this portrait celebrates Norman not only as a gifted diva but also as a forceful figure of political change. Norman, who grew up in the segregated state of Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s, assumes majestic proportions to challenge the slow change in the classical music community. “Racial barriers in our world are not gone,” Norman once said, “so why can we imagine that racial barriers in classical music and the opera world are gone?”

Nearly three decades later, Los Angeles–based photographer Catherine Opie (b.1961) extends this impact of declaration in the social space, creating dramatic colour portraits that draw upon classical portraiture traditions to convey power and respect. In her series of portraits made around 2017, Opie worked with large-format 8×10 film, posing her subjects in front of a black backdrop. Thelma, 2017, recalls Karsh’s tour-de-force portrayal of Norman: the subject, Thelma Golden, renowned director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, is photographed as a nearly full-length figure emerging from a dark background, draped in tapestry-like garments with ornate floral patterns. Golden’s assured demeanour declares her command of both personal and political space as the producer of groundbreaking exhibitions by contemporary artists of African descent.