What distinguished “Karsh of Ottawa,” as the pre-eminent portrait photographer of the twentieth century came to be called, was his kinship with his subjects. His widow, Estrellita Karsh, was often asked, “What is the secret of Karsh?” And she would reply, “The secret is not of , the secret is in . Because it was his own quality that made people love him and trust him.”

Karsh’s iconic studio portraits of statesmen, authors, actors?all men and women of towering accomplishment?owed something to his singular charm: His custom was to disarm his subjects first, to engage them and flatter them. “Who is the greatest person of this century?” he would ask, and the connection was established, the collaboration begun.

Born in Turkish Armenia in 1908, the young Karsh saw family members slaughtered in the Armenian genocide, and yet once described his mother’s “gentle nursing” of his dying sister. “My recollections of those days,” Karsh wrote, “comprise a strange mixture of blood and beauty, of persecution and peace.” Given such unshakable positivity, it should come as no surprise that he was obsessed with light.

Karsh arrived in Canada as a seventeen-year-old, “armed only with good manners,” as he put it, to work in his uncle’s photography studio in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The uncle saw his nephew’s talent and sent him to apprentice with his friend and fellow Armenian John Garo in Boston, where Karsh also took art classes to study lighting, design, composition, and the work of the great masters, especially Rembrandt and Velazquez. By going to the theatre, he learned that light could be precisely controlled and to great effect.

By the early 1930s, Karsh was living in Ottawa, convinced the nation’s capital would “attract the most interesting people to photograph.” Among his first studio portraits were those of Lord and Lady Bessborough, the Governor General and his wife, in 1935. Two studio sessions were required as Karsh’s nerves played havoc with his focus the first time. Still, he saw himself as an artist, and he took steps to separate himself from other photographers by adopting a trademark fedora and black cape and using a white camera rather than the usual black model.

By 1941, Karsh was clearly more confident. That year, Winston Churchill came to Ottawa to address Parliament, and Karsh was given two minutes with him. In the mouth of this hostile subject was a cigar that Karsh boldly, instinctively removed. Churchill’s scowl deepened, and with that, Karsh had the photograph that would change his life and truly launch his career.

Yousuf Karsh published fifteen books of his photographs, and he became almost as famous as his subjects, who included Muhammad Ali, Ernest Hemingway, Grace Kelly, John F. Kennedy, and Fidel Castro, to name only a few.