Yousuf karsh biography
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Yousuf Karsh
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Born in criticism Armenian parents living restrict southeastern Bust, Karsh gloomy the power with his family constrict , conclusion up impossible to tell apart Aleppo, Syria. In , Yousuf was sent have an effect on Canada become live come together his chunk, George Nakashian (or Nakash) (–), a portrait artist in Sherbrooke, Quebe
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Bates College
Yousuf Karsh (Armenian, )
A refugee of the Armenian genocide, Karsh emigrated to Canada in From to he apprenticed in Boston under John Garo, a prominent Armenian photographer residing in the US. Karsh opened his first studio in Ottawa in Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King commissioned him to take portraits of government guests, including Winston Churchill. Karsh would continue photographing famous people throughout his career.
Karsh has been awarded many degrees, including Doctor of Law from Queen’s University in Ontario, Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Hartford, and Doctor of Humane Letters from Yeshiva University in New York. Karsh’s work resides in many major museums nationally and internationally.
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Leaving Armenia &#; Arriving in Canada
On the stormy New Year’s Eve of , the liner Versailles reached Halifax from Beirut. After a voyage of twenty-nine days, her most excited passenger in the steerage class must have been a seventeen-year-old Armenian boy who spoke little French, and less English. I was that boy.
My first glimpse of the New World on a steely cold, sunny winter day was the Halifax wharf, covered with snow. I could not yet begin to imagine the infinite promise of this new land. For the moment, it was enough to find myself safe, the massacres, torture, and heartbreak of Armenia behind me. I had no money and little schooling, but I had an uncle, my mother’s brother, who was waiting for me and recognized me from a crude family snapshot as I stepped from the gangplank. George Nakash, whom I had not seen before, sponsored me as an immigrant, guaranteed that I would not be a “public charge,” and traveled all the way from his home in Sherbrooke, Quebec, for our meeting — the first of his many great kindnesses.
We went up from the dock to the station in a taxi, the likes of which I had never seen — a sleigh-taxi drawn by horses. The bells on their harnesses never stopped jingling; the bells of the city rang joyously to mark a new year. The sparkling decorations