Word: karsh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1947-1947
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This week, in an impressive volume (Faces of Destiny, Ziff-Davis; $5) Karsh, now 38, shows 75 of the best pictures of the 500 notables he has snapped. In an explanatory text he also discourses on his subjects. Here & there, in his sitters' studio manners, he finds a few minor guideposts to history...
Prod to Provoke. For a photographer, Karsh works fast; he usually needs no more than 20 minutes to get all the shots he wants. He uses a $100 Ansco camera, an 8 x 10 with a $265 lens and a long cable release. His trick is to walk around the room talking to his subjects till they are wheedled, or needled, into the expression he wants. Then he snaps the shot. When irascible Harold Ickes persisted in looking blandly benevolent, a reference to his pet hate of the moment, the Canol project prodded him into looking natural...
...Charles de Gaulle could spare only 30 seconds for his portrait. Yet the single superb picture caught Le grand Charlie's imperious, cold character perfectly. John L. Lewis dashed out of his chair after each exposure, dashed out of the room the fourth time. George Bernard Shaw gave Karsh five minutes when he sat down. But when he found out that Karsh was an Armenian by birth, he gave him a Shavian shaving: "I have many friends among the Armenians, but to keep them strong and healthy they should be exterminated every little while." Later he gave Karsh...
...Karsh's sitters were in a hurry. Foreign Minister Molotov ("notably calm himself, he hates to see other people get excited") posed for 22 minutes. Former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes sat statuesquely for 45 minutes before intoning: "And now, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." When Britain's wartime bomber chief, Lord Portal, appeared direct from the barber's chair, Karsh suggested they wait two weeks because a new haircut "automatically makes a photograph unfit for publication...
...Blanket & the King. Karsh likes to highlight his sitters against simple settings, often an old grey army blanket pinned against the wall. When he photographed King George VI in London, the Buckingham Palace backgrounds were too ornate to set off the King's gold-braided admiral's uniform. Out came the old blanket, and His Majesty helped to hang it in place...