Yousuf Karsh

Made Churchill hold still. Respect.

Yousuf Karsh was born in 1908 in Mardin, in what is now southeastern Türkiye, to an Armenian family. In 1924, as a teenager, he emigrated to Canada to join an uncle who was a photographer, and later opened his own studio in Ottawa.

In December 1941, Winston Churchill visited Canada's Parliament and Karsh was given a few minutes to photograph him. Churchill arrived with a cigar. Karsh, the story goes, stepped forward and removed it from his mouth, then took the picture. The resulting scowl became one of the most reproduced portraits in history and an emblem of wartime resolve.

Over a six-decade career Karsh photographed an extraordinary roll call of 20th-century figures, from Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway to Audrey Hepburn and Nelson Mandela. His dramatic lighting and intimate framing set the standard for formal portraiture. He died in Boston in 2002.

Karsh is also the reason this site celebrates the spelling Yousuf: it hangs in museums.