In Search of Greatness

The author. An informal portrait by Floyd S. Chalmers

 IN
SEARCH
OF

GREATNESS
Reflections of yousuf IKarsh
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
© UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS 1962
by University of Toronto Press
Design by Harold Kurschenska
To Solange
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 Preface

The pages that follow tell the story of a young refugee from the Armenian
massacres who, like so many others, found a new life in the New World.
But it is not, I hope, the story of just a single person, but rather one of
many people—some of them great and some of them good and a few both
great and good. It is also the story of a search, a search to record by means
of the camera the quality of human greatness in many spheres of activity:
the arts, religion, scholarship, business, public affairs.
The search has been twofold. As I became aware of the scope of photo-
graphy as an art, I had at first to seek out the world personalities whom
I wished to portray, and I had also to develop all the skill and understand-
ing I could in order that I might be enabled to record their greatness in my
portraits. To this kind of seeking there is no end, for both new subjects
and new ways of interpreting them are firing me constantly with new
hopes, new ideas. The perfect photographic portrait has still to be made.
The photographer of personages is necessarily a storyteller, for this
will come easily to him. Although he should be a tireless student of his
subjects, rather than tire them he may even seek to entertain them on
occasion. And his encounters with great personalities can hardly fail to
move him to recount his experiences with them later, a pleasant fault
to which I plead guilty. (Rarely do these anecdotes reflect too unfavour-
ably on their subjects, for I would be the last person to take unfair advan-
tage of the personalities I meet in my work.) But the personage must be
brought to a state of being interested, absorbed—even provoked occasion-
ally—if the picture is to be successful. When a real rapport between
subject and photographer has been reached, the conversation can be
fascinating, at least to me.
I believe I have a good memory for good talk, and my memory has
always been reinforced by my practice of recording immediately after
each important sitting my impressions of the personality and my recollec-
tions of the conversation between us, conversation which pleases me most
when it reaches good repartee in both directions.
I am a photographer and not a writer; my camera is, I trust, more
powerful than my pen. I do not think that what I have to say about any-
one will ever be as significant as my portrait of him. But I have had the
privilege of mingling with some of the great of this world. They received
me with courtesy, talked to me with simplicity, and often found time to
tell me events of their life's work and of the philosophy which had
guided and inspired them. A good portrait is a work of collaboration, the
result of a meeting of minds, even though the collaboration may last for
only a fraction of a second.
To my friends certain anecdotes in this book may be twice told tales.
I have no pity for them; it is their frequent importunities that I should

viii PREFACE
"write it all down" that has brought this upon them. I am glad to have
had the opportunity, however, of recording the kindnesses shown to me
throughout my career by my friends on so many occasions. In the pre-
paration of this book I am particularly indebted to my Canadian publisher,
Marsh Jeanneret, Director of the University of Toronto Press, who,
together with the Assistant Director of the Press, Eleanor Harman, aided
me during the original dictation of the text and its subsequent revision,
and to my beloved Solange, who dreamed of the completion of this book
and, indeed, accomplished much of the initial research. Ralph Sadler
helped me to recall details of early days in Boston, and adjusted many
of my commas and semicolons. Bruce Hutchison read and criticized the
text. My secretary, Joyce Large, wrote innumerable letters and searched
through my files to verify facts and dates and places. Any errors of fact
or expression that remain are my own fault; I absolve all those who have
helped me.

April, 1962 Y.K.

Little Wings

PREFACE ix
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 Contents

Preface vii
1 Forth From the Garden 3
2 With Garo in Boston 21
3 Ottawa Studio 39
4 Ottawa Crossroads 62
5 Photographic Reflections 93
6 InternationalPortfolio—I 117
7 InternationalPortfolio—II 146
8 Portraits of Greatness 178
9 Solange 191
Index 205
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 Illustrations

The author. An informal portrait by Floyd S. Chalmers frontispiece

facing page
The author with John H.Garo 18
Prize-winning landscape made by the author at 18 18
Winston Churchill. Portrait by Karsh 19
The author with his mother 34
Solange in Brittany in 1954 34
Albert Einstein. Portrait by Karsh 35
Helen Keller. Portrait by Karsh 82
Jan Sibelius. Portrait by Karsh 83
Pablo Casals. Portrait by Karsh 98
Ernest Hemingway. Portrait by Karsh 99
Photographing Pope JohnXXIII 146
In Rome, 1959. The author, Bishop Sheen, H. V. Morton 146
The National Gallery show, 1960 147
"People pay a thousand bucks . . ." Cartoon from Vancouver Sun 162
"On location" in North Africa 162
Solange dancing under the willow 163

xiv ILLUSTRATIONS
Jn Search of Greatness
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 1

forth from the Garden

It was on New Year's Eve in 1925 in the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia,
that the New World opened its heart to me for the first time. I was a sixteen-
year-old Armenian youth, the most excited passenger aboard the French
liner Versailles, just making port from Beirut. I recall that the docks were
covered with snow, and that it seemed to take the tugs a very long time to
bring us alongside. But I remember, too, that the bells of the city were
pealing gloriously as we waited to go ashore, and their sound brought great
joy to my soul. For me, it was the most wonderful New Year's Eve of my
life.
I had come to Canada alone, although some distant relatives were on the
same vessel—three or four cousins of my mother who spoke no language
other than their mother tongue. I do not remember that they had been asked
to escort me and indeed I had been helping to look after them during our
passage. They needed someone who could speak French or English, and I
could speak a little of both, although not more than a very little. In English
I could distinguish between words like "dog" and "God," but I had to stop
to remember which was which. In French I could do rather better.
My Uncle Nakash, my mother's brother, greeted me as I stepped from
the gangplank. He had lived in Canada since about the time I was born.
Although I had never seen him, he had corresponded with my family about
my coming to Canada, and now at last he had sponsored me as an immigrant
to this new country. His journey all the way from Sherbrooke, Quebec, to
meet me in Halifax was only the beginning of his many great kindnesses,
kindnesses which opened a life I had not known existed, and a career that
I had never imagined.
Uncle Nakash recognized me immediately from the photographs my
mother had sent to him, and I knew him by the same means. He greeted me
in Arabic, my mother tongue, and at once I felt—as I always have felt since-
thai I was among friends in this wonderful new country. I had been brought
up to speak Arabic, rather than Armenian, for the simple reason that in
Mardin, Turkey, which was my home, when the Armenian language was
spoken there were curses, and very often stones thrown in the street. We
seldom heard Armenian spoken except in church.
I remember that there was a big community hall of some kind near the
dock where we landed in Halifax, and into this building the immigrants,
myself included, were made to file with all our belongings. In my case there
was no problem of baggage, for I had arrived very nearly empty-handed;
certainly I had no need of the place to exchange currency for I had brought
none of that either. The Canadian government had approved my applica-
tion to come only because Uncle Nakash had guaranteed to support me;
and in this and everything else he remained better than his word.
Uncle Nakash was permitted to stay with me during the long formalities

4 IN SEARCH OF GREATNESS
of checking and re-checking our papers, which continued throughout the
night. He was very impatient with the delay, but I was too fascinated to
understand his boredom, and too unaware of Canadian distances to fret
about missing the transcontinental train we were to catch the next morning.
Everything was new to my eyes—the officials and the uniforms they wore
and the architectural details of the building where we waited. That night
we all slept in separate bunks in one grey huge miserable room, but at an
early hour in the morning I was given my release and was allowed to follow
my Uncle Nakash into the freedom of my new country.
We went up from the dock to the station in a taxi—a sleigh-taxi drawn by
horses with bells on their harness which never stopped tinkling. It was New
Year's Day, and everything was beautiful and exciting, the sparkling decora-
tions on the buildings and in the windows, a church with people going to
early service, the huge American automobiles and the swinging tramways,
the shop windows and the crowds of grown-ups walking and children play-
ing. Everybody looked happy, and I was intoxicated by their joy. For me, it
was a new kind of dream experience, with dizzying dimensions.
Although our destination was no farther than Sherbrooke, in the Eastern
Townships of the Province of Quebec, I was speedily impressed by the vast
distances and varying terrain and weather of the New World. I recall that
we travelled by an all-Canadian route, and that we slept two nights on the
train. The delay must have been occasioned by the adventure we had with
a severe snowstorm along the way. Our train was stalled in a deep snowdrift
for many hours, for me a new experience. We also ran entirely out of food,
but this was a situation with no novelty for me.
I was born in Mardin, the chief town of a sanjak of the Diyarbakir vilayet
of Asiatic Turkey, on December 23,1908, of Armenian parents. My father

FORTH FROM THE GARDEN 5

was a fairly successful merchant, engaged in importing and exporting goods
ranging from art work to fine furniture, rugs, and spices. In carrying on his
business he used to travel to distant lands to buy and sell beautiful and rare
things for others on a commission basis. In spite of his undoubted ability in
commerce, my father did not know how to read or write; these skills were
by no means universal in his time and in his country. What is surprising,
however, is that although an educated woman in Armenia was rare, my
mother was extremely well read. Among other subjects, she possessed a fine
understanding and command of the Bible, being able to interpret splendidly
the meaning of its beautiful words.
I was the eldest of the living children of my parents. There was an older
brother, but he died in infancy and I never knew him. After me there was
a girl, who died during the typhus epidemic in Armenia in 1916. Next came
my brother Malak, born in 1916, and then my brother Jamil, born in 1920.
My youngest brother, Salim, was born in Syria in 1926, after we had fled
from the terrible persecution that was soon to reach its height in our home-
land.
Although my father was unlettered, he was gifted with a phenomenal
memory for facts and figures. His ability to calculate, for example, put the
literate members of my family to shame. In later years he would sometimes
set Malak and Jamil to work posting his ledgers. In doing this, his memory
alone would produce all the figures that would normally have been
entered in the original journal, and he would dictate to his sons from
memory his every transaction of the preceding week. When he had
finished, he would say, "I have calculated. What is the total of the commis-
sions? How much do I owe this one? I have not spent all that one's money;
how much do I repay him?" Then he would check their balances, and

6 IN SEARCH OF GREATNESS
would say, "Malak! Your calculation is wrong, but Jamil's is right" (or
perhaps vice versa). Then he would go on, "Malak, you made a mistake
here; this cannot be right." And whichever son he called in error, unfail-
ingly that son would be proved to be incorrect.
Mardin was a town of about 27,000 souls during my childhood, on the
eve of World War I. Something like half of these were Christians, includ-
ing the Armenian, Jacobite, and Chaldean communities. It was, as I re-
member it, a city of many churches—but also a city of many mosques.
The buildings of Mardin cloaked the steep south slope of a cone-shaped
hill, and the manner in which one tier of houses rose above the tier beneath
gave the whole something of the appearance of the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon. At the peak of the hill were the ruins of an ancient castle, where
Muslims had held the Mongolian hordes at bay in a previous age. The
clear, dry climate is invigorating, and the countryside about has always been
renowned as a fruit-growing district. Not only did it appear as a veritable
Garden of Eden, it was firmly believed and widely taught that here indeed
was the original home of Man and Woman on earth, where "out of the
ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight
and good for food." The inspiration of the author of the Book of Genesis
could have been drawn from nowhere other than the land about Mardin.
In Mardin, too, we tasted manna, as did the children of Israel in the
wilderness. This delicious green sugar appeared on the leaves of some trees
at certain seasons, and could be scraped off and pressed on to a piece of
bread. Or you could allow it to dry up and coagulate, when it would become
very hard indeed, and might be broken with a knife and hammer and
chewed, like maple sugar. I have read scientific explanations of manna, but
prefer to think of it as it seemed in my childhood, a delicious food, which

FORTH FROM THE GARDEN 7

came rarely, but always when you were not looking, and which tasted
always of just what you liked best. I remember my own father saying that
when the faithful tasted manna, the flavour was not the same for all, but
for each what he most desired. A very appropriate food for the Garden of
Eden!
Religion played an important part in my early education, although an
account of its form must disturb any reader seriously concerned about my
spiritual upbringing. My father was a devout Roman Catholic, while my
mother—the greatest Christian woman I have ever known—was born into
the Protestant faith. I myself was baptized in the Roman Church, and was
sent to a Roman Catholic school in Mardin. Indeed, there was serious
thought that I might later study for the priesthood; I became the protégé of
one of the Brothers who taught me and he held this ideal before me and
before my father constantly. In the end my mother decided against it, and in
after years, when we were both in the New World, I sometimes teased her,
saying, "Well, you know if you had permitted me to study for the priesthood
you would have been the first Protestant mother of a Pope."
Although I was brought up and remain today a member of the Roman
Catholic faith, I cannot aspire ever to become more than one of its lesser
saints. My mother's Christian influence was at least as strong as any other
of my childhood, although always there was complete religious harmony
in our home. And so it was that if my mother smiled at me on Sunday morn-
ing, I would go with her to church. And if my father smiled first, I might
take his hand and go with him. I was brought up to feel that all the world
was right as long as one believed in God and in Christ; and I loved my
mother and admired the goodness of my father. Religious differences were
never discussed by my parents, and I was unaware as a child of division

8 IN SEARCH OF GREATNESS
among Christians. But the gap that separated us from Islam was a totally
different matter.
While the name Armenian does not actually mean Christian, the terms
were considered synonymous across Turkey. To be sure, Armenia—lest it be
forgotten—was the oldest Christian nation in the world. And although
Christians were a minority in my homeland, the Muslims depended on the
Christians in commerce, industry, architecture (many of the mosques were
built by Armenians) and indeed for almost anything that had to be done.
It is not my function to trace the reasons for the terrible reaction born of
this relationship throughout my childhood days. Suffice it to say that geno-
cide in the Hitlerian sense was invented by the Turkish masters of my
people. For almost twenty years, Armenia was subjected to a systematic
campaign aimed at the extermination of my race. This hideous persecution,
which began in the closing years of the nineteenth century, forms part of
my earliest memories of Mardin. It reached its peak in the bloody atrocities
of 1915, and did not end for my immediate family until we were permitted
to flee to Syria with our lives—and with nothing more—in 1922.
I remember two of my uncles, brothers of my mother, who were highly
skilled craftsmen. One of them was a calligrapher, a man who produced
exquisitely illuminated manuscripts of passages from the Bible, and also
from the Koran, in the course of his work. These uncles—they belonged to
the Nakash side of the family—were denounced for supposed crimes which
I cannot recall, and which I am equally certain they could not recall at the
time either. For no reason at all, they were torn from their homes and cast
into prison. It was little Yousuf Karsh to whom was delegated the duty of
taking food to them in jail. I was chosen because only a child could hope to
deliver packages past the soldiers in the streets. And always my mother

FORTH FROM THE GARDEN 9

made sure that I had two packages, one a little larger than the other. I would
deliver the bigger one to the jailer for his own use, and we would hope that
he would pass the smaller parcel to my uncles.
At last I was told that there would be no more packages to deliver to the
jail. Word had been brought to us that both my uncles were dead. One had
been suffocated in a cupboard, in which he had been forced to stand for
hours or days (I do not know which) without food or water, and without
air to breathe. The other had been thrown alive into a well.
There was another member of the Nakash family, my Aunt Nazlie, who
also was cast into a well to die. My father succeeded in bribing a Turk to
rescue her and we finally nursed her back to health. Ultimately she came
to Canada, married, and raised a wonderful family before her death a few
years ago. On another occasion I saw with my own eyes a dead baby hang-
ing on a butcher hook, such as was used to suspend a sheep after slaughter-
ing. Cruelty for its own sake was everywhere.
My mother, I must repeat, was one of the great Christians of our time
and I worship her memory. She loved everyone, Muslim and Christian
alike. She was a disciple of all that is good. It was she who befriended a
young Armenian girl whom the Turks had turned loose, but not before
they had torn both her eyes from their sockets. This girl's name was Mary;
although we had neither room nor food to spare for her, my mother took her
in. When my mother felt that she could not deprive the others in our family
of what few morsels of food there were, she would smile and say, "Mary
can have some of mine."
I remember Mary well, for my mother taught her to find her way about
with a cane, which she quickly learned to do with great proficiency. Mary
became familiar with everything and everybody in the neighbourhood.

10 IN SEARCH OF GREATNESS