Significance & Critical Issues

Yousuf Karsh’s portraits are a visual encyclopedia of the twentieth-century Western world, a theatre of personality showcasing timeless individual qualities such as greatness and beauty amid collective alienation, fragmentation, and relentless change. Karsh believed the camera could reveal a person’s true self if distilled by a skilled photographic interpreter. Analyzing selected aspects of his work raises new questions about classical portraiture as a modern expression, the complex dynamic between photographer and sitter, and the role of portraits in constructing identity. Karsh’s works define and challenge concepts of truth and objectivity, perspective and performance, and question what we can truly know from a portrait.

Karsh the Storyteller

Karsh’s dramatic 1941 portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his international reputation, but equally as famous was his first-hand account of the sitting, in which he related his own nervous impertinence as a young photographer snatching a lit cigar from the wartime leader’s lips. In this sense, Karsh created a narrative that operates on two levels: the first is a charming origin story marking his own experience of making the portrait, and the second is the portrait’s symbolic meaning, which accrued with each reproduction. The key to Karsh’s success as a master portraitist was his remarkable skill as a storyteller.

Karsh’s strategy was to link three perspectives—the subject, the artist, and the viewer—each one an active agent in fabricating the meaning of the image. Specifically, Karsh envisioned the image as the carrier of the visual narrative through pose, setting, props, and expression. To deepen the audience’s engagement in viewing the portrait, Karsh then inserted himself into that narrative. For him, “the photographer of personages is necessarily a storyteller.… And his encounters with great personalities can hardly fail to move him to recount his experiences with them later.” His interest in connecting the visual image to a printed or oral anecdote was distinctive and set a template for his later work, especially in the production of his many portfolios of portraits, with each image accompanied by text.

His portrayal of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould—renowned for his interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach and for his eccentric movements and humming during performances—shows him entirely engaged in the music, seemingly oblivious to the photographer and his camera. In sharing this portrait, Karsh inserted himself into the narrative by relaying the story of his encounter with the famous sitter and emphasizing his own special access as artist and director. In his collection Karsh Canadians (1978), the accompanying text on the page facing the portrait begins with Karsh’s experience photographing Gould and then relates Gould’s impressions of his recent tour of the Soviet Union:

While I photographed Glenn Gould at his Toronto home, in 1957, he never stopped playing the piano for a moment. The music, Bach and Alban Berg, was so arresting that I found myself captivated, forgetful of camera shutter and lights. Critics have often muttered about Gould’s unconventionality, but it seemed to me that his mittens, the frequent hand-soakings before a concert, his facial contortions and audible humming were all in keeping with his personality. There was, I thought, no deliberate eccentricity, only a total absorption in art.

Karsh shared this story for a future audience, to convey what it was like to spend time with Gould during the sitting and emphasize their kinship as artists. The overall narrative—Gould as musical genius—is conveyed by the image of Gould absorbed in his music paired with Karsh’s revealing account of being likewise captivated.

German philosopher Walter Benjamin considered the role of the storyteller to be that of a carrier of cultural truths, a performer who unmasks social and political myths. Karsh’s role as storyteller serves not to unmask a hidden truth behind a public persona but to weave a new narrative, a personification distilled in image and text, prepared specifically for an imagined audience.

Karsh’s limited command of English (it was, after all, his fourth language) meant that he had to develop strategies for creating polished writing from raw notes and verbal reportage. For much of his career, the work of composing and editing this text was undertaken by his spouse—first Solange and later Estrellita. Both women were skilled communicators and were essential to Karsh’s realization of engaging personal stories. In large-scale projects, such as his portfolio Portraits of Greatness (1959), the accompanying biographies and details about meeting the sitters were complex undertakings involving advance questionnaires, interviews during the session, and post-sitting development with professional editors to create a consistent narrative voice. In this way, Karsh worked against the tide of contemporary art photography—notably the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004), Robert Frank (1924–2019), and Lisette Model (1901-1983), who provided minimalist titles or scant caption information to allow for an open-ended formation of a narrative on the part of the viewer.

Although Karsh worked largely in a classical portraiture tradition—delivered in a dramatic modernist style—he was an important innovator when presenting his portraits to a mass audience. As an artist, Karsh entwined his own experience with the narratives of the subject and the eventual viewer. He carefully considered how to portray an individual through a single, summative portrait combined with a personal anecdote. For the viewer, Karsh’s pairing of image and text fostered a greater sense of familiarity with a celebrated stranger. The final construction of the narrative lay with the viewers, who formed their own intellectual and emotional responses to beholding the portrait with Karsh’s accompanying first-person account.

A Courtly Tradition

Spanning six decades across the intersection of modern and postmodern photography, Karsh’s practice was rooted in the classical tradition of courtly portraiture. Karsh had been encouraged to study examples by portraitists such as Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) during his apprenticeship in Boston, and he understood how to portray his patrons in a way that would invite an admiring gaze from the viewer. The careful selection of setting, pose, and prop conveyed coded signs of social stature, personal comportment, or notable achievement. In both his commissioned studio portraits and his sittings with famous figures, Karsh aspired to depict his subjects at their best, treating each sitting as an opportunity to create an immortal image.

In 1935, Karsh made what he considered his first important commission, a regal depiction of Governor General Lord Bessborough and his wife. Upon photographing the Bessboroughs, Karsh was granted the honour “By Appointment to Their Excellencies, The Governor-General and Lady Bessborough”—later printed on the Karsh Studio portrait cover—and continued to be endorsed by his successor, Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir, John Buchan. Karsh leveraged this significant commission to elevate his status as an artist, hone his interpersonal and professional skills, and expand his clientele.

After the publication of his iconic portrait of Churchill, Karsh conceived an ambitious series that received financial backing from his editor at Saturday Night, B.K. Sandwell. In 1943, Karsh crossed the Atlantic on an explosives-laden Norwegian freighter, travelling to London to photograph leading British wartime figures and cultural luminaries, including King George VI, H.G. Wells, and Noel Coward. Among his portrait subjects during this 1943 trip was Princess Elizabeth, then eighteen years old and serving as an ambulance mechanic and driver. The portrait session took place at Buckingham Palace, and Karsh later recalled being impressed by her “wholesome charm, good humor, and entire lack of affectation.” He would go on to take official portraits of her and her family on multiple occasions over the next forty-four years, including one of Elizabeth that was disseminated widely upon her ascension to the throne in 1952.

Later, in advance of Canada’s Centennial in 1967, Karsh was selected to create new official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II alone and with her husband, Prince Philip, dressed in their regal splendour in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace. As official portraits representing the Crown in Canada, they were reproduced for formal display in federal buildings and in Canada’s consular and embassy spaces worldwide.

The impact of such portrayals on viewers has been described by artist and theorist Allan Sekula (1951–2013) as “the look up,” in which we confer admiration or respect on the subject of the portrait. In these acts of looking, we engage in creating social distinctions, positioning our own identities by judging the identities we construct about the subject of the photograph. The portrait became foundational to Karsh’s enduring interest in the concept of greatness. Later, remarking on his role as a portrait photographer tasked with revealing the ennobling qualities of his sitters, he said: “The question… is whether I should record the legend, or something else about the personality…. I am satisfied that no purpose would be served if I were consciously to seek to convert what could be a portrait of greatness into a moment of weakness.”

Framing the Hero

Karsh believed that a person’s essence, or true self, could be revealed before the camera and distilled by a skilled photographic interpreter. His interest lay in perceiving and recording a psychological moment of truth. As he wrote of his own work in Karsh Portfolio in 1967, “Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world.”

Karsh’s project, built one portrait at a time, sought to assemble a pantheon representing the best of humanity, a theatre of personalities emphasizing individual character, talent, and beauty. Conscious of a public audience avidly viewing his portraits of celebrated individuals, Karsh grappled with the dilemma of creating portrayals that combined fact (this person is posed in front of the camera at a specific moment) and fiction (the photographer tells you a story about this person through specific technical and artistic choices).

Karsh’s portrayal of greatness as aspirational depended on factors unique to his time. His approach reflected contemporary ideas found in the work of Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, theories of the modern self composed of ego and subconscious, as well as a collective consciousness populated by universal archetypes. Additionally, Karsh, a devout Catholic, subscribed to a profound spiritual “hope for humanity and faith in the Infinite,” and sought to elicit a portrait of the soul.

Karsh’s narrative choices originated from the “allegorical impulse” of late Pictorialism practised by his mentor, John H. Garo (1870–1939), and supplemented by the influence of historical painting and modern photos of Hollywood idols. His aesthetic emphasized sharp focus, dramatic tonal contrast, and minimalist setting and served to enhance attention on the facial expression. For example, Karsh photographed New Zealand explorer and mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary seven years after he and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. By framing his subject in a tight close-up, Karsh monumentalizes Hillary through the dominance of pictorial space. The triangular composition frames Hillary as a colossal summit, signifying his achievement.

In 1962, Karsh photographed Dr. Martin Luther King, leader of the American civil rights movement, one year before he delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech. King’s faith-based commitment to social justice is signalled through his upward gaze. His face radiates fortitude and certainty in his mission to secure racial equality. The portrait—of a hero leading the battle for justice—took on reverent significance following King’s assassination in 1968.

The monumentality of Karsh’s portrayal in both visual and psychological terms demanded a willingness from the viewer to see those depicted as heroes and not, as later proved to be true for so many, complex and flawed individuals. Karsh admitted as much, conceding, “While I am a hero worshipper, I do not expect my heroes not to show signs of the humanity that they share with us all.” Across time, certain portrait subjects were unmasked as villains; for example, Karsh’s 1988 portrait of American financier Bernard “Bernie” Madoff features the confident businessman who had been entrusted with investors’ life savings posed with his hands prominently placed across the arm of an ornately carved chair. In 2009, Madoff was found guilty on eleven counts of robbing tens of thousands of victims of their funds, amounting to an estimated $65 billion.

It is significant that Karsh’s portraits may be interpreted as either revealing an essential character or distilling a staged performance of it. During most of Karsh’s career, a firm boundary existed between people’s public and private lives. Famous personalities and ordinary people alike were expected to behave with decorum in their public lives, and Karsh was relied upon by his portrait subjects not to reveal any embarrassing or unflattering images. This tacit understanding has largely disappeared with the advent of cameras in every cellphone, ready to record and upload any human experience, and the proliferation of non-consensual photography, such as paparazzi snapshots, closed-circuit observation, and security scans.

Picturing Indigeneity

Consideration of Karsh’s portrayals of Indigeneity begins with two portraits of non-Indigenous men. Karsh photographed celebrated British writer and conservationist Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, better known to Canadians by his self-styled Anishinaabe identity, Grey Owl, in 1936, before the public revelation of his non-Indigenous identity. This portrait, a close-cropping of the sitter’s sharply defined face gazing beyond the picture frame, garnered acclaim in art photography circles and was selected by Canadian artist Bertram Brooker (1888–1955) for the 1936 edition of Yearbook of the Arts in Canada.

In 1937, Karsh photographed Scottish novelist John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, who had been appointed two years earlier as Canada’s fifteenth governor general. According to records in the Karsh archive, he photographed the governor general and his family in at least thirty sittings. In one variation of the traditional portrait sitting, Karsh depicts Tweedsmuir wearing regalia presented to him as honorary Chief Eagle Head by the Kainai Chieftainship in 1936. As a formal portrait, it serves as a ceremonial acknowledgement of the honorific gesture to forge diplomatic links with the incoming governor general, who was deeply interested in Canada’s history and culture. But the portrait also invites the possibility of misreading the figure as an Indigenous person, which indeed occurred. Karsh later recalled that a copy of this portrait was requested by Queen Elizabeth (the future Queen Mother) “to show the little Princesses what a real North American Indian looks like.”

Nearly a century later, the portraits suggest many interpretations. Karsh was, undoubtedly, a product of his time as a non-Indigenous person sharing the romantic notion of the “noble savage,” as depicted in art history. Both portraits were created at the apex of European and North American interest in, and nostalgia for, Indigenous identity, knowledge, and culture—reframed as “vanishing,” a euphemism for deliberate extinction. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, documentary photographers working for Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs depicted their subjects as conquered and inferior. The photographers focused their lenses on individuals who were enduring material poverty and adverse health conditions as part of governmental efforts to assimilate them into mainstream (settler) culture.

In his later portraits of Indigenous individuals, Karsh operated within this non-Indigenous double perspective: settler subjects commissioning portraits of themselves romantically posed as Indigenous people, and actual Indigenous people captured on camera as subjects of documentation and subjection.

In 1952, Karsh was commissioned by Maclean’s magazine to photograph Canadian cities, ultimately publishing sixteen photo essays between 1952 and 1954. On March 20, 1952, Karsh photographed Indigenous patients at the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta. Karsh’s access was arranged by hospital authorities; he had little time to establish rapport with patients—most of whom were assigned temporary settler names during their treatment.

Portraits from this series were published as part of “Karsh’s Edmonton: Threshold of the Frontier,” a photo essay featured in the December 15, 1952, issue of Maclean’s. The piece included a two-page display of four images, introduced with the words, “Children of the Frontier: In these portraits, taken in Edmonton’s Camsell Hospital for natives, Karsh captures something of their resignation, fortitude, immutability and pride.” This problematic text, added during production by Maclean’s writers, obscures Karsh’s perspective in photographing the Camsell patients. In the context of his era, Karsh’s view was not particularly distinct from other documentary photographic practices, such as journalism, anthropology, or street photography, where the photographer’s benevolent intentions, the power imbalance with the portrait subject, and the interests of a publisher may coexist.

Though Karsh’s portraits of Indigenous individuals reflected his experiences as an ethnic outsider as well as his respectful demeanour, he also photographed Indigenous subjects through the lens of the prejudices of his time. He later adapted, as Indigenous advocacy shifted Canadian attitudes toward addressing injustice.

In 1976, Karsh photographed celebrated Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013), a leading figure in the Kinngait (Cape Dorset) printmaking community, known for her captivating portrayals of Arctic birds and scenes of daily life. Kenojuak is posed next to her felt pen drawing They Are Happy to Eat Together, 1975, which was featured in a travelling exhibition organized in 1975 by members of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, who invited artists to illustrate a new Sunday Missal. Karsh portrays Kenojuak as an independent artist and storyteller, in control of her narrative, rather than as an anonymous documentary subject. But the portrait, shot in a gallery environment, may not have used the artificial lighting so essential to Karsh’s signature dramatic contrast of light and shadow. Instead, the overall tonality of the picture is very light, with minimal contrast between the artist, her artwork, and the setting, and suggestive—intentionally or otherwise—of a snowbound Arctic environment.

Toward the end of his career, Karsh photographed acclaimed architect Douglas Cardinal during the construction of the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History), across the river from Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. Born in Calgary, of Métis, Blackfoot/Kainai, German, and Algonquin heritage, Cardinal created an organic curvilinear design that defined an Indigenous style of modern architecture. One variant from the 1989 photo session shows Cardinal in a suit and tie, standing in the doorway of his office next to a rendering of the museum design. A second version shows the architect sitting cross-legged on a blanket, with rolled architectural drawings on shelves to the left, wearing a fringed and beaded jacket and smoking a long-stemmed ceremonial pipe. Together, the portraits reveal an intensely personal integration of multiple traditions in Cardinal’s distinctive practice.

Hope and Catharsis

Karsh lived through the Armenian massacres he witnessed as a child, the barbarism of two world wars, and the threat of nuclear annihilation from the Cold War. He saw his portraits as beacons of hope and believed that progress in politics, business, and culture could be embodied in individuals of high achievement. In Karsh’s optimistic world view, portraits could alleviate the anxieties of a troubled world.

One of his most reproduced works, the 1948 portrait of Albert Einstein seated at his desk at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, draws our gaze: the Nobel physicist known for his theory of relativity appears wise and genial, and was later described by Karsh as “a simple, kindly, almost childlike man.” For the viewer, Einstein’s gentle demeanour imparts a resigned acceptance of the human-generated threat to life on Earth following the convulsive twentieth-century discoveries of the universe and its laws. Karsh’s text commentary for the portrait reinforces this perspective: “He spoke sadly, yet serenely, as one who had looked into the universe far past mankind’s small affairs. When I asked him what the world would be like were another atomic bomb to be dropped, he replied wearily, ‘Alas, we will no longer be able to hear the music of Mozart.’”

Karsh believed it was the artist’s job to accomplish at least two things: to stir the viewer’s emotions and to lay bare the soul of his subject. The emotional response to viewing images, or reception, is a significant aspect of photographic theory. Ultimately, it is the viewer, responding to the experience of beholding Karsh’s portrait, who ascribes meaning to it.

Lilly Koltun considered Karsh’s objective in his approach, arguing that from his early years as a portraitist, he pursued an intention clearly defined in terms of cathartic purgation, or emotional release, to relieve the viewer’s anxiety about the self and the world’s admired achievers and leaders. Accompanying this objective, though perhaps not explicitly, was the portrait’s function of alleviating any anxiety that Karsh’s pantheon of exalted figures might be fallible, or worse, malevolent.

Karsh photographed individuals associated with world events, never the events themselves. In front of his camera, politicians appear visionary, war leaders dignified, and business moguls benevolent. In this historical chronicle, Karsh suspends moral judgement over his collection of talented individuals to present a universe of exceptionalism. His project aimed to give visual language to concepts of imagination and innovation, achievement and altruism, benevolence and courage. In this way, his work embodies a belief that humanity could be less cruel and more accepting of difference, a utopian realization of geopolitical harmony.