Karsh Portraits

Yousuf Karsh is a classic portrait artist of the camera, photographer of the world's great. To be photographed by Karsh has been a sig of personal accomplishment for a third of a century. During that time his camera lens has repeatedly -- and unforgettably -- recorded the illuminating gesture, the unique attitude, the moment's reflection, to create a definitive picture of one celebrated personality after another. Here in one volume are forty-eight memorable portraits from the Karsh portfolio. they form an imposing cross-section of the figures who have shaped our public life and private thoughts.
Some of the faces are familiar: the qualities of greatness that make a Churchill, a Shaw, a Hemingway, an Einstein, a Casals, a Sibelius, or a Schweitzer are not eclipsed even within a full generation. Here also are new views of Henry Moore, Marshall McLuhan, and Pablo Picasso and recent portraits of other figures, never before published together in a book by Karsh. The new portraits reflect the rapidly changing world of the seventies -- Muhammad Ali, Fidel Castro, Prince Charles, Jacques Cousteau, Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov -- and Karsh's continuing interest in the advance of medical science: Hans Selye and Helen Taussig. To reproduce with fidelity the velvety blacks and brilliant highlights of Karsh's original mat-finish prints, this book employs sheet-fed gravure and the finest in printing craftsmanship. Karsh's portraits are world-famous because he has intense interest in his subjects.
Each portrait is accompanied by Karsh's recollections of the moments when the picture was taken. The result is a record of extraordinary personal rapport and technical skill. Many of these images will endure -- as great portraits and remarkable photographs. As a reviewer has said of Karsh's work: 'He makes visible what others only sense; he makes pictorial what to others is only a mood.'