Yousuf Karsh
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Yousuf Karsh was born on December 23, 1908 in Madrin, Turkey. He left at age sixteen to live with his uncle in Quebec, Canada, who had a photography studio, resulting in Yousuf learning the basics of photography there. To improve his skills he became an apprentice for a well known photographer at that time; John H. Garo. He apprenticed for three years and after that opened his own portrait studio in Ottawa, hoping it would attract important individuals because of its prime location. The photograph that made him so well known as he is today was the portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, making it one of the most famous portrait photographs in photography history. He sold the photo for LIFE magazine for only $100, but after that, he started receiving incredible attention, even being called "the official portrait photographer" in Canada.
In 1946 he published his first book Faces of Destiny that contained portraits of men and women led an attack on the allied victories of Europe and the Pacific. He sometimes worked on industrial photos, such as Ford Canada Ltd. and Atlas Steel Ltd, but his obvious focus was on portraits. As more time passed, more people wanted to be photographed, some were famous figures such as Elizabeth Taylor and Albert Einstein, while other's were everyday individuals. All his portraits were shot very formally against a black background, really capturing the focus point, the person. He photographed 17,000 people over six decades. Karsh died on July 12, 2002 in Boston, Massachutes. He died being known as the photographer of the most important people in the 20th century, but not to mention, normal everyday people like you and me. Karsh wrote "I believe that it is the artist's job to accomplish at least two things—to stir the emotions of the viewer and to lay bare the soul of his subject. When my own emotions have been stirred, I hope I can succeed in stirring those of others. But it is the mind and soul of the personality before my camera that interests me most, and the greater the mind and soul, the greater my interest."
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