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ROBERT FISK'S WORLD: THE RIGHT PHOTOGRAPHER CAN STRIP A LEADER'S POWER IN A FLASH
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/c ommentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-the-right -photographer-can-strip-a-leaders-power-in-a-flash -1800599.html
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Karsh was an arch man, not afraid to make his sitter into a clown or
a chump
The photograph was taken in the Speaker's Chamber in the Canadian
House of Commons in Ottawa - only a four-hour train ride down the
old Canadian Pacific tracks from the studio in Toronto where Shelton
Chen is displaying it now - and Churchill had just delivered his
"Some chicken - some neck!" speech to a crescendo of applause.
But it wasn't the speech that made him glower. Nor was it Hitler's
apparently imminent capture of Moscow. Churchill was a sick man when
he arrived in Ottawa, "flabby and tired" according to the Canadian
prime minister, Mackenzie King. But no, it wasn't his health. It was
the little problem of his cigar.
Churchill did not know that King had trapped him into the photo
session and grudgingly told Karsh - a Turkish-Armenian whose father
saved his family from the Armenian genocide in 1915 through his
friendship with a Turkish army commander - that he could take only
one picture. Churchill's Havana cigar was between his lips but Karsh
didn't want a portrait that included this old theatrical prop. So he
plucked it from the old boy's mouth with the words: "Sir, I have an
ashtray all prepared for you." By the time he got back to his camera,
Karsh was to recall, "He looked so belligerent he could have devoured
me." Bingo. Lion at bay.
So I look at the photograph again. Churchill thwarted. Churchill not
a little insulted. His hair, I notice suddenly, is soft and parted
in such a central way that it almost covers his baldness. And his
hands. In Karsh's picture, they are smooth, almost feminine, but the
jowls are heavy, not a man to suffer fools, especially when they steal
his cigar. But as I glance to the right, there is a different Chur aphy
of Karsh, the Canadian parliament speaker was lighting another cigar
and Churchill brightened at once, offering Karsh one more shot. The
insult had turned into admiration for the Armenian's pluck. "Well,
you certainly can make a roaring lion stand still to photograph him,"
Churchill growled. And there is the second Churchill on the studio
wall beside me, benevolent, generous, eyes ablaze, a happy poseur
glorying in publicity, lion turned labrador-golden retriever at bay.
Back in his developing room, Karsh realised he had captured an
inspiring moment. But, as Tippett writes, "Much had to be done during
the washing, drying, retouching, and other stages of the developing
and printing process. He had to make Churchill look less tired and
less haggard... He had to give Churchill more strength and gravitas
by giving him more solidity." And he had to give more strength - not
very successfully, it has to be said - to those feminine hands which,
Karsh himself admitted, had shocked him. "Middle tones" were added to
the prime minister's face. Churchill was now almost superhuman. Who
would imagine that Singapore was about to fall, that there might be
U-boats waiting for him in the Atlantic on his way home?
So is the photograph "real"? Is this Churchill? Or a Karsh version
of Churchill? Karsh was an arch man, not afraid to make his sitter
into a clown or a chump. I looked carefully at his 1963 portrait
of Khrushchev - taken only months before he was deposed - and the
Armenian had persuaded the First Secretary of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union and Lord of all the Russias to wear a heavy fur
coat and knitted hat. He beams out of it, all charm and humour and
spotty face. "Be quick, it's very warm," Nikita told Karsh, "and this
is a ferocious animal. It is likely to eat me up." But is this the
Khrushchev who would be eaten up by the Politburo the following year,
the man who banged his shoe on the table at the United Nations, the
former political commissar in the ruins of 1942 Stalingrad? Or a Karsh
creatio shchev to pose with his arm in the air as if saluting troops.)
The other portraits ask questions of themselves. Did Gregory Peck
really have such a giant quiff - this was in 1946 - and did Brigitte
Bardot really wear so much make-up in 1958 (probably yes) and was
Ingrid Bergman so happy in 1946? Laurence Olivier is holding a glass of
white wine - poured by Karsh, perhaps? - while a vast colour portrait
of Charlton Heston shows the awful hypocrite resting his hand on
a volume of Thomas Mann. In 1956, Yul Brynner looks appropriately
mysterious; G B Shaw's eyes peer from below his massive, shadowing
eyebrows in 1943. But surely that is only because Karsh's lights were
set close above the left side of his head. Yes, it's all about light -
that's how God blesses Karsh's subjects.
Poor old Jean Sibelius (1949) has skin like delicate parchment, but
Karsh has told him to close his eyes - prominent Finnish composer
dreams of the Karelia Suite, I suppose - while an uncompromising
Admiral Mountbatten in uniform (1943) looks past us with boundless
arrogance. Did Madame Chiang Kai-Shek always wear a veil? Hemingway
(1947) looks like the drinker he was, but were his eyes actually
suspicious? Castro, hands on hips, challenging, accusatory, angry
eyes - this was in 1971 - looks like the kind of man whose anger will
embrace a photographer or two.
I suspect, in the end, that we have to accept that portraiture is
art. We have to take the dictators and fools and rogues and heroes
at Karsh's version of face value but not, I suspect, as vérité,
not necessarily the man we would have seen in the Ottawa speaker's
chambers or in Khrushchev's dacha or in Heston's favourite hotel
in Beverly Hills. Yes, I would like to know just how sick Churchill
really was in 1941 (and later) but so would the rest of the world,
including the leader of Nazi Germany.
Which raises another question. If Hitler had smoked, what would have
happened to Karsh had he plucked a cigar from the Fuhrer's lips?
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/c ommentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-the-right -photographer-can-strip-a-leaders-power-in-a-flash -1800599.html
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Karsh was an arch man, not afraid to make his sitter into a clown or
a chump
The photograph was taken in the Speaker's Chamber in the Canadian
House of Commons in Ottawa - only a four-hour train ride down the
old Canadian Pacific tracks from the studio in Toronto where Shelton
Chen is displaying it now - and Churchill had just delivered his
"Some chicken - some neck!" speech to a crescendo of applause.
But it wasn't the speech that made him glower. Nor was it Hitler's
apparently imminent capture of Moscow. Churchill was a sick man when
he arrived in Ottawa, "flabby and tired" according to the Canadian
prime minister, Mackenzie King. But no, it wasn't his health. It was
the little problem of his cigar.
Churchill did not know that King had trapped him into the photo
session and grudgingly told Karsh - a Turkish-Armenian whose father
saved his family from the Armenian genocide in 1915 through his
friendship with a Turkish army commander - that he could take only
one picture. Churchill's Havana cigar was between his lips but Karsh
didn't want a portrait that included this old theatrical prop. So he
plucked it from the old boy's mouth with the words: "Sir, I have an
ashtray all prepared for you." By the time he got back to his camera,
Karsh was to recall, "He looked so belligerent he could have devoured
me." Bingo. Lion at bay.
So I look at the photograph again. Churchill thwarted. Churchill not
a little insulted. His hair, I notice suddenly, is soft and parted
in such a central way that it almost covers his baldness. And his
hands. In Karsh's picture, they are smooth, almost feminine, but the
jowls are heavy, not a man to suffer fools, especially when they steal
his cigar. But as I glance to the right, there is a different Chur aphy
of Karsh, the Canadian parliament speaker was lighting another cigar
and Churchill brightened at once, offering Karsh one more shot. The
insult had turned into admiration for the Armenian's pluck. "Well,
you certainly can make a roaring lion stand still to photograph him,"
Churchill growled. And there is the second Churchill on the studio
wall beside me, benevolent, generous, eyes ablaze, a happy poseur
glorying in publicity, lion turned labrador-golden retriever at bay.
Back in his developing room, Karsh realised he had captured an
inspiring moment. But, as Tippett writes, "Much had to be done during
the washing, drying, retouching, and other stages of the developing
and printing process. He had to make Churchill look less tired and
less haggard... He had to give Churchill more strength and gravitas
by giving him more solidity." And he had to give more strength - not
very successfully, it has to be said - to those feminine hands which,
Karsh himself admitted, had shocked him. "Middle tones" were added to
the prime minister's face. Churchill was now almost superhuman. Who
would imagine that Singapore was about to fall, that there might be
U-boats waiting for him in the Atlantic on his way home?
So is the photograph "real"? Is this Churchill? Or a Karsh version
of Churchill? Karsh was an arch man, not afraid to make his sitter
into a clown or a chump. I looked carefully at his 1963 portrait
of Khrushchev - taken only months before he was deposed - and the
Armenian had persuaded the First Secretary of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union and Lord of all the Russias to wear a heavy fur
coat and knitted hat. He beams out of it, all charm and humour and
spotty face. "Be quick, it's very warm," Nikita told Karsh, "and this
is a ferocious animal. It is likely to eat me up." But is this the
Khrushchev who would be eaten up by the Politburo the following year,
the man who banged his shoe on the table at the United Nations, the
former political commissar in the ruins of 1942 Stalingrad? Or a Karsh
creatio shchev to pose with his arm in the air as if saluting troops.)
The other portraits ask questions of themselves. Did Gregory Peck
really have such a giant quiff - this was in 1946 - and did Brigitte
Bardot really wear so much make-up in 1958 (probably yes) and was
Ingrid Bergman so happy in 1946? Laurence Olivier is holding a glass of
white wine - poured by Karsh, perhaps? - while a vast colour portrait
of Charlton Heston shows the awful hypocrite resting his hand on
a volume of Thomas Mann. In 1956, Yul Brynner looks appropriately
mysterious; G B Shaw's eyes peer from below his massive, shadowing
eyebrows in 1943. But surely that is only because Karsh's lights were
set close above the left side of his head. Yes, it's all about light -
that's how God blesses Karsh's subjects.
Poor old Jean Sibelius (1949) has skin like delicate parchment, but
Karsh has told him to close his eyes - prominent Finnish composer
dreams of the Karelia Suite, I suppose - while an uncompromising
Admiral Mountbatten in uniform (1943) looks past us with boundless
arrogance. Did Madame Chiang Kai-Shek always wear a veil? Hemingway
(1947) looks like the drinker he was, but were his eyes actually
suspicious? Castro, hands on hips, challenging, accusatory, angry
eyes - this was in 1971 - looks like the kind of man whose anger will
embrace a photographer or two.
I suspect, in the end, that we have to accept that portraiture is
art. We have to take the dictators and fools and rogues and heroes
at Karsh's version of face value but not, I suspect, as vérité,
not necessarily the man we would have seen in the Ottawa speaker's
chambers or in Khrushchev's dacha or in Heston's favourite hotel
in Beverly Hills. Yes, I would like to know just how sick Churchill
really was in 1941 (and later) but so would the rest of the world,
including the leader of Nazi Germany.
Which raises another question. If Hitler had smoked, what would have
happened to Karsh had he plucked a cigar from the Fuhrer's lips?