© Yousuf Karsh/camera press
"Yousuf Karsh is a photographer from a bygone age", writes stern-Artdirector Johannes Erler, "who looked for virtues such as power, courage, intelligence and genius in his photographs." Just have a look at the pics here on this page and you know that Erler is indeed very right. He also shares the following story: "In a Boston hospital there is a room where doctors meet patients and their families to discuss the findings of their diagnosis. It is a fateful room because the news is often bad. During his lifetime, Karsh donated a number of his most famous portraits to the hospital so they could be hung up in this room. And they are a real help, the doctors say because they encourage patients in their will to live. I know of no other photographs about which something like that has been said." I wouldn't know one either. And, I truly adore a photographer who can accomplish such powerful, and inspirational, pictures.
© Yousuf Karsh/camera press
There is also a longer text in which Jochen Siemens, among quite some other stories, tells the one of how Karsh removed Churchill's cigar and shot one of the most extraordinary Sir Winston photographs ever. Also, Siemens's eloquence contributes substantially to an even more precise and joyful reading: "... in this particular second everything came to a head in Winston Churchill, deprived as he was of his beloved cigar: indignation at the photographer's impudence, weighing up his opposite number with a lurking scowl, the power of his empty hand pressed against his hip, the stance – if you look closely – a hint of amusement (between the left-hand corner of his mouth and his eye) at the strange man behind the camera.") One would wish that more such detailed observations would accompany photographs.
© Yousuf Karsh/camera press
Again and again I wondered: How did Karsh do that? How come he can accomplish what others seemingly can't? There must be a special chemistry between photographer and the person photographed, I thought, but with all of them? Siemens argues that Karsh "was always searching for the essence of his opposite number in order to lift it onto a higher plane – adoration, not investigation", and Scottish photography historian Sara Stevenson explains: "The ability to ally yourself with your opposite number – to empathise to a certain extent with that person and the significance of that person – allows models to be themselves ... Portraiture is essentially empathising art."
© Yousuf Karsh/camera press
stern Fotografie Nr. 71 is one of these rare photo books in which you will see the ones portrayed as you haven't seen them before. And this is not a cliché, this is simply the way it is.
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The accompanying booklet (Talent 04) features Alma Haser who 'reconstructs', I'm told, "the sitter's face using the paper-folding technique of origami and then adds this to the original face." I truly do not know what to think of it.
Yousuf Karsh
stern Fotografie Nr. 71
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