Yousuf Karsh, the Turkey born, Armenian Canadian photographer is one of the best portrait photographer of the last century & an inspiration for the Opium of Art series. His portrait techniques are mostly very simple but extremely effective posing & studio lighting styles. He has photographed almost everyone we know! From Hollywood film stars to the greatest leaders in the world.
Yousuf Karsh was so great in his portrait photography talent that the Bank of England chose Winston Churchill by Yousuf Karsh to appear on the front of its all-new polymer banknote, which is now in circulation across the United Kingdom.
Of this picture of Winston Churchill, the photographer later said “My portrait of Winston Churchill changed my life. I knew after I had taken it that it was an important picture, but I could hardly have dreamed that it would become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography.”
The story of the famous Winston Churchill picture is both entertaining as well as promising for new portrait photographers. The story is detailed in Yousuf’s own words & the climax of that shooting leading the photographer to pluck the cigar out of Winston Churchill’s mouth before clicking the shutter.
One of my many favorites from Yousuf’s collection is the portrait of Andy Warhol. The lighting is very dramatic and the pose quite curious – completely in lines with Andy’s personality and style. I still how such creative photographers frame the hands! And as for this picture, the shimmer of light on the paint brush still puzzles me.
Yousuf’s framing & lighting personalities like scientists are straight & very realistic, eliminating the drama that one would expect from a film personality. The pictures of Albert Einstein & Sir Alexander Fleming (who discovered the enzyme lysozyme and the antibiotic penicillin) are great examples.
Yousuf Karsh has photographed almost all the high profile Hollywood stars of his time including the numerous Oscar winners. Its important to keep in mind that Yousuf photographed these celebrities with a large view camera, a 8 by 10 with an interchangeable 4 by 5 back.
According to his documents, for negatives, he used special chemicals that allowed a faint green light to reveal the deepening densities so he could judge each one individually. For prints, he had two developers, “hard” and “soft”, and sometimes both would be used on the same photograph – one to bathe the print, and the other to be applied in specific areas with a piece of cotton.
Yousuf designed the entire shot by himself, including hair, make-up, or styling & rarely had any makeup artists have their ways. He chose the location, the setting & the props. When the sitter was appropriately framed, he would start engaging his subject & use a remote to catch that moment while in conversation.
Yousuf Karsh’s portraits of the peace Nobel Laureates are sobering. The kindness in their eyes, the humility in their posture, the serenity created by the ambient lighting, the catch light in their eyes all add up to the making of some of the best portrait photography.
For studio lighting, this photographer preferred tungsten lights because “he could see the results playing across the faces of his subjects”. He also preferred static continuous lighting over flash of strobes as they were less disruptive.