Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh

A fine biography of Karsh. Ms Tippett starts with his life in the Middle East - how and his parents managed to escape and survive the Turkish genocide of the Armenian people. Mr. Karsh came to Canada at the age of fourteen to live with his uncle in Sherbrooke. His uncle was a successful portrait photographer in that region of Southern Quebec and this started Karsh off on his career. He married Solange Gauthier who played a pivotal role through-out his life. They met in Ottawa where Karsh had started work in a photo studio. Solange helped him to solidify and expand his governmental contacts in the Capital city. He took photographs of Prime Minister MacKenzie King as well as other government officials. Solange always helped in his work by seeking clients for her husband; prior to the studio shoots she would inform Karsh of the background of his client and during the portraits she would help put his customers at ease. Karsh's big break-thru came in 1941 when he took the forever defiant and memorable photo of Winston Churchill, just after he had finished speaking in the Canadian Parliament. With this added to his portfolio and shown in newspapers and magazines around the world (except Germany), Karsh was forever in demand. During the war he traveled to England and the U.S. This was with hundreds of pounds of camera equipment and before air travel. Ms. Tippett hi-lights many of the important photo's of Karsh's career and the book has many of these - most of which are excellent. All are well constructed and the technique immaculate. As Ms. Tippett points out Karsh was criticized in the photographic community as being commercial and a `celebrity chaser'. But it must also be acknowledged that all his photos are dignified and timeless. If you admire the subject you will love the Karsh photo - the photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt is wonderful (but I didn't like the one of Pierre Trudeau). Like all good biographer's Ms. Tippett does not glorify her subject. Mr. Karsh was a distant person and didn't take easily to some of the people who worked for him. Yet for those who did do his work(developing, preparing the lighting for the photo shoots...) - they took part in photo's that are icons of 20th Century history. Karsh photograph's - as the ones' in this book well illustrate, have withstood the test of time and are etched in our memory.