Copyright of the Book: Septembre de la Photo 2006, Yousef Karsh - Portraits, Culures Nice

…Born in Mardin, Turkey, Yousuf Karsh had to flee his country for safety. He moved to Sherbrooke, Quebec where he and his family of Armenian origin, settled with his uncle, a well-know portrait photographer. His interest in photography took him in Boston to learn technique, later he set up his studio in Ottawa where he worked until 1992.

He started to photograph Heads of State and personalities traveling thought the Canadian capital, such are Charles de Gaulle, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Albert Schweitzer, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, These portraits made him famous and he was well-known for his technical ability, his attention to detail and always using strong imagery to form a clear message.

With his reputation on the rise, he was asked to photograph British Prime Minister Winston Churchill after his historic address to the Canadian house of Parliament. His portrait of an uncompromising and invincible Winston Churchill has gone down in History.
His international career continued until he retired in 1992. When he closed down his studio in «Chateau Laurier», he had made about 11.000 portraits of personalities from various horizons. He passed away on July 13th, 2002 and left behind some of the most impressive and admired portraits of the 20th Century.

As he used to put it: «Personalities are like photographs, they reveal their inner selves in the dark. My endless fascination for these personalities comes from the fact that I delved into their inner strength and I reveal it through an unconscious gesture, a frown, an unexpected reaction, a calm moment, this is the instant that needs to be captured for posterity».

Jacques Peyrat, Mayor of Nice, Senator of Alpes-Maritimes, President of Nice – Côte d’Azur Agglomeration Community

…Like all those who dreamt so hard of a new Life, Karsh built his piece by piece on the pedestal of his enthusiastic ambition and genius. Leaving his uncle's little lab in Sherbrooke –South-west of Montreal – he joined a photographer in Ottawa and foresaw the transition that the Great Depression would generate in the 1930s, the real end of a lingering 19 th Century and the dawn of a new era with dark outlines.

Karash's genius lies in the precision and realism of his style allowing him to set himself up as one of the first modernists in his new country. With all precursors' contributions, Canada started expressing a resolute and assumed modernity. Karsh managed to nourish this modernity thanks to his extraordinary intuition and instinct that led him to rub shoulders with the greatest ones.

Karash held his first solo exhibition in Toronto when he was 30. At only 33 he photographed Churchill. In 1958, the magazine Popular photography hailed him as the only portraitist among the 10 greatest photographers in the world. He was then only 50.

The Year of Canada in Nice invited us to cast to new look on Canada . The Karash exhibition is an opportunity to look through the eyes of a transcendent Canadian at the world, at his time, at his contemporaries.

Claude Laverdure – Ambassador of Canada to France