Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh is acknowledged to be the twentieth century's leading portrait photographer, whose iconic images of Bogart, Hemingway, Churchill, the Kennedys, Auden, Castro, Einstein, the Clintons, Khrushchev, Casals, Elizabeth II inhabit the mind's eye of anyone familiar with photographic history. A refugee from the ethnic cleansing of Turkish Armenians in 1916, Karsh made his home in Boston and Ottawa, but travelled the globe during his 60-year career, photographing political leaders, celebrities, monarchs and movie stars. He died in 2002, aged 94. His archive contains 50,000 portraits. This is the first biography, written with help from his family and colleagues, and based on the Karsh archive in Ottawa.