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Exhibition Shows Karsh Built Immortality On More Than Technique

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  • Exhibition Shows Karsh Built Immortality On More Than Technique

    EXHIBITION SHOWS KARSH BUILT IMMORTALITY ON MORE THAN TECHNIQUE

    Brandon Sun
    Monday, June 29th, 2009

    OTTAWA - The photographs of Yousef Karsh are technical marvels -
    exquisitely lit, sublimely detailed, masterfully printed.

    But it was the man himself who transformed an Armenian immigrant
    into 'Karsh of Ottawa', a raconteur and photographic virtuoso through
    whose lenses generations of world leaders, celebrities and cognoscenti
    sought immortality.

    Personable, engaging and curious, Karsh knew how to draw out his
    subjects and reveal through his predominantly black-and-white images
    something of their souls.

    "He was very sensitive to his sitters and a very insightful artist
    who was able to draw out expressions, poses, moods in the portrait
    session which were really quite extraordinary," says Brian Dewalt,
    curator of communications at the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

    Ottawa's science-and-tech museum may seem a strange place to celebrate
    a portrait master's 100th birthday, but this is an exhibition with
    a difference.

    Part of the citywide Festival Karsh (www.festivalkarsh.ca), "Karsh:
    Image Maker" follows the process surrounding what the master described
    as the elusive "moment of truth."

    As pointed out in the exhibition's promotional material, his signature
    style was "the result of many meticulous artistic and technical
    decisions."

    It also came from charm, personality and understanding.

    The exhibition draws on the extensive resources of Library and Archives
    Canada and the Portrait Gallery of Canada. It showcases some of his
    most famous photographs while exploring his work behind the scenes
    and exhibiting some of the equipment he used.

    There are his impressive 8x10 cameras, the huge enlarger he and
    his master printer used, as well as displays showing their printing
    processes and techniques.

    There is, of course, a collection of his exquisite prints reflecting
    the hope of Nelson Mandela, the beauty of Audrey Hepburn, the vision
    of Fidel Castro, the promise of Martin Luther King, the depth of
    Albert Schweitzer, the intensity of Glenn Gould and, most famously,
    the bulldog defiance of Winston Churchill.

    But perhaps the most revealing element of the exhibition is a series of
    small prints of Karsh himself, at work and at play. There are pictures
    with his mother, at work in the studio, on location and with a series
    of personalities from politicians and actors to wildlife photographer
    Ansel Adams and puppeteer Jim Henson.

    They show a dapper man humble and joyful in his work - loved, trusted,
    respected, totally at ease with his tools and his subjects.

    Karsh usually worked away from his large-format camera, a "remote"
    in his hand as he conversed with his subjects, asking questions,
    exchanging views, engaging them as he almost passively triggered
    the shutter.

    An assistant would manipulate the lights at his direction. The 8x10
    and 5x7 cameras he most used held only one negative at a time. Each
    image was a carefully chosen moment with profound undertones.

    Churchill's scowl, it is well known, was elicited when Karsh snapped
    the cherished cigar from the British prime minister's lips during a
    two-minute session on Parliament Hill on Dec. 30, 1941.

    "The Churchillian scowl deepened, the head was thrust forward
    belligerently, and the hand placed on the hip in an attitude of anger,"
    Karsh wrote in Faces of Our Time, his 10th of 15 books.

    The image captured Churchill and the England of the time perfectly -
    defiant and unconquerable.

    It became one of the most reproduced photographs ever taken, used on
    Churchill commemorative stamps in many countries, including Canada,
    Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

    There were many other memorable encounters over the years.

    Karsh loved people, and could hold his own with the best of them.

    His sessions were events in themselves and became renowned for their
    repartee. An engaging, intelligent personality, he had a gift for
    disarming his subjects, for dismantling the walls that people erect
    between themselves and the camera - exposing, it seemed at his best
    times, their very souls.

    "He had a great ability to get right to the heart of the matter and
    be able to put it into a photograph," his late brother, Malak Karsh,
    a renowned architectural and landscape photographer, once said of him.

    Karsh was polite and curious. He asked questions, elicited answers,
    reflections, profound moods. His sessions became known as "visits"
    and his subjects gave of themselves "with love and respect," said
    his brother.

    "People knew they had a master with them and they appreciated that
    opportunity. They gave him the opportunity to find out what he needed
    to know about them so he could render them in the best way possible."

    Combined with his mastery of light and composition, it made a
    formidable portraitist - a modern-day master, working most often in
    shades of grey.

    Karsh once said the fascination of greatness lies not in
    accomplishments or physical features, but in the essential element
    that created it.

    "I call it the 'inward power,"' he wrote in Karsh Portfolio. "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. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the
    photographer must act or lose his prize."

    Karsh was born in Turkey on Dec. 23, 1908. He died in Boston in 2002
    at age 93.

    The recipient of 17 honorary degrees and the only Canadian named
    one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by the
    International Who's Who (he had photographed more than half of them),
    Karsh left behind a legacy for all the world.

    His work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of
    Canada, New York's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of
    Art, George Eastman House, La Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the
    National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery
    of Australia and many others.

    Canada's national library and archive holds his complete collection,
    including negatives, prints and documents. His photographic equipment
    was donated to the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

    "Karsh: Image Maker" continues at the science-and-tech museum through
    Sept. 13 and is expected to go on national tour after that.
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