I'm not sure this is the right spot, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me about a 14"x18" colour portrait,(print) I found in my basement. It is titled 'The President and Mrs. John Fitzgerald Kennedy'and has 'Karsh of Ottawa' printed on the bottom right.

-- Sid Leroux (pate@ottawa.com), February 04, 2002

Answers

Yousuf Karsh made portraits of many celebrities, government leaders, etc. Just do a search on his name on www.google.com.

Karsh made a fantastically great portrait of Winston Churchill. It hangs over my desk (I'm a Churchill fan, and the portrait captures him precisely.) the story of the portrait (told by Karsh) is that Churchil, being a painter, told Karsh how to take the photographs. Karsh's response to that was to do as the subject preferred, and then do it his own way. At one point, Karsh stepped out from behind his camera and took away Churchill's cigar. The result was an archtypical portrait of a person who -- IMHO -- was the toughest person who lived in the 20th Century.

-- Jeff Polaski (polaski@acm.org), February 05, 2002.