Sources & Resources

Yousuf Karsh’s lifetime work is preserved as an extensive archive dispersed across three institutions. Collections of selected portraits are held by many major institutions, and since his death in 2002, Karsh’s work continues to attract public interest through major travelling exhibitions. Throughout his career, he produced many luxury editions featuring biographical notes and personal recollections. His 1962 autobiography, In Search of Greatness, established the narrative of his formation as a photographer, rise to international acclaim, and interactions with famous sitters.

Key Exhibitions

Posthumous Exhibitions

Archival Collections

Library and Archives Canada, Yousuf Karsh Fonds

Acquired between 1987 and 1998, the fonds consists of over 350,000 negatives, photographic prints, and transparencies representing Karsh’s creative output between 1932 and 1993. It also includes business papers, publishing projects, magazine tearsheets, personal correspondence, scrapbooks, awards and honours, and recorded interviews.

Canada Science and Technology Museum, Karsh of Ottawa Collection

At the close of the Karsh Studio, more than 385 pieces of Yousuf Karsh’s photographic equipment, including lights, cameras, darkroom equipment, and retouching accessories, were transferred to the national collection.

Estate of Yousuf Karsh (Karsh.org)

This is a comprehensive online resource with a complete digitized inventory of more than fifteen thousand portrait sittings and biographical notes about Karsh’s sitters.

Museum Collections

Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth

Art Institute of Chicago

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

Detroit Institute of Fine Arts

Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

George Eastman House, Rochester

Glenbow Museum, Calgary

Huntington Library, San Marino, California

International Center of Photography, New York

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Modern Art, New York

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

National Portrait Gallery, London

National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Royal Library and Royal Archives, Windsor, England

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Selected Publications by Yousuf Karsh

Karsh, Yousuf. Faces of Destiny: Portraits by Karsh. Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1946.

———. Portraits of Greatness. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959.

Karsh, Yousuf, and John Fisher. Karsh and Fisher See Canada. Toronto: Thomas Allen Limited, 1960.

Karsh, Yousuf. In Search of Greatness: Reflections of Yousuf Karsh. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962.

———. Karsh Portfolio. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967.

———. Faces of Our Time. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1971.

———. Karsh Portraits. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976.

———. Karsh Canadians. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978.

———. Karsh: A Fifty-Year Retrospective. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1986.

———. Karsh: American Legends. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1992.

———. Karsh: A Sixty-Year Retrospective. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1996.

Selected Writings on Yousuf Karsh

Ali, Mehmed. Yousuf Karsh & John Garo: The Search for a Master’s Legacy. Mansfield, MA: Benna Books, 2016.

Borcoman, James, ed. Karsh: The Art of the Portrait. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1989.

“Camera Notes; PSA Honors Four from New York—Contests.” New York Times, October 5, 1947.

Danziger, James, and Barnaby Conrad III.  Interviews with Master Photographers: Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Cornell Capa, Elliott Erwitt, Yousuf Karsh, Arnold Newman, Lord Snowdon, Brett Weston. New York: Paddington Press, 1977.

Delaney, Jill. “Karsh and the Face of Canada.” In Yousuf Karsh: Heroes of Light and Shadow, edited by Dieter Vorsteher and Janet Yates, 187–94. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Company Ltd., 2001.

Deschin, Jacob. “Musicians Viewed by Six Photographers.“ New York Times, December 21, 1947.

Donegan, Rosemary. “Karsh’s Working Man: Industrial Tensions and Cold War Anxieties.” In Yousuf Karsh: Heroes of Light and Shadow, edited by Dieter Vorsteher and Janet Yates, 153–61. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Company Ltd., 2001.

Fielder, Jerry. “John Buchan and Yousuf Karsh.” The John Buchan Journal 50 (2017): 9–19. https://johnbuchansociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/JBS-Journal-050-Inside-Contents.pdf.

Getty, Cassandra, and Jerry Fielder. Yousuf Karsh: Industrial Images. Windsor, ON: Art Gallery of Windsor, 2007.

Koltun, Lilly. “Framing a New Light: Karsh Addresses the Audience of the Theater and the Press.” In Yousuf Karsh: Heroes of Light and Shadow, edited by Dieter Vorsteher and Janet Yates, 123–36. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Company Ltd., 2001.

———. “’In Your Own Drama, You Are The Star’: Portraiture Subjects Drawn from Cultural Life in Canadian Photography, circa 1895–1955.” PhD diss., University of St. Andrews, 1996.

———. “The Karsh Collection.” In Karsh: The Art of the Portrait, edited by James Borcoman, 141–50. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1989.

———. “Yousuf Karsh: Frame, Focus, Fame.” In Yousuf Karsh Portraits. Nice: Musée des Beaux-Arts Nice, 2006.

Kramer, Hilton. “’Portrait Photographs’—A Historic Collision.” New York Times, September 14, 1969.

Lesser, Rebecca. “By the Side of the ‘Roaring Lion’: Yousuf Karsh’s Portrait of Winston Churchill and British/Canadian Wartime Relations.” MA thesis, University of Calgary, 2010.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Karsh: A Biography in Images. Boston: MFA Publications, 2003.

Newton, Gael. “Curatorial Essay: The Vision of Yousuf Karsh and His Photographs of the Illustrious Greats of Japan.” The Good, the Great & the Gifted: Camera Portraits by Yousuf Karsh and Athol Shmith of Melbourne, National Gallery Exhibition History, National Gallery of Australia, accessed October 23, 2024, https://nga.gov.au/exhibitions/the-good-the-great-the-gifted.

Opp, James. “Picturing Communism: Yousuf Karsh, Canadair, and Cold War Advertising.” Queen’s Quarterly 118, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 584–97.

———. “Still Photographs, Publicity, and the Making of Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments (1956).” Film History 34, no. 4 (January 2022): 1–29.

Rombout, Melissa. “Approaching the Legends of Yousuf Karsh.” Queen’s Quarterly 105 (Winter 1998): 586–99.

———. Karsh: Faces of the Twentieth Century. Canberra: National Portrait Gallery of Australia, 1998.

———. “Karsh in London.” Archivist 116 (1998): 15–19.

Teodorescu, Ioana. ”Karsh: Image Maker / Créateur d’images.” Material Culture Review 70 (Fall 2009): 82–87.

Tippett, Maria. The Life of Yousuf Karsh: Portrait in Light and Shadow. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2007.

Travis, David, ed. Karsh: Beyond the Camera. Boston: David R. Godine, 2012.

———. Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes. Boston: David R. Godine, 2009.

Audio and Video about the Artist

A Conversation with Estrellita Karsh. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2021, 17 min. 50 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGlkOoyQ8h4.

Hillel, Joseph, dir. Karsh Is History. 2009, 52 min.

Rasky, Harry, dir. The Searching Eye. 1986, 1 hr. 22 min.

60 Minutes with Morley Safer: Hero Worship. CBS Inc., 1977, 10 min. Library and Archives Canada 314077.

Ten Minutes with Yousuf Karsh. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1962, video, 9 min. 25 sec. Library and Archives Canada 314061.

“Yousuf Karsh: Pursuing Greatness.” Podcast interview with Dr. Robert Evans (photohistorian) and Dr. Jill Delaney (photo-archivist). Episode 23, Library and Archives Canada, July 28, 2015, 50 min. 54 sec. https://library-archives.canada.ca/eng/collection/engage-learn/podcast/Pages/yousuf-karsh-pursuing-greatness.aspx.

Further Reading

Bassnett, Sarah, and Sarah Parsons. Photography in Canada, 1839–1989: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2023.

Loengard, John. Celebrating the Negative. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1994.

Lutz, Catherine, and Jane Collins. “The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic,” Journal for the Society of Visual Anthropology 7, no. 1 (March 1991): 134–49.

Lyons, Nathan, ed. Contemporary Photographers: Toward a Social Landscape, New York: Horizon Press, 1966.

Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2011.

Schwartz, Joan M. “Salon Crescendo / 1930–1940.” In Private Realms of Light: Amateur Photography in Canada, 1839–1940, edited by Lilly Koltun, 88–113. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1984.

Sekula, Allan. “The Body and the Archive.” In The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, edited by Richard Bolton, 343–89. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.