Yousuf Karsh's lifelong ambition was to search for a form within a face, one that could become a symbol for a life that was purposeful, meaningful, and generally virtuous. "I speak with some experience when I say that I have rarely left the company of accomplished men and women without feeling that they had in them real sincerity, integrity yes, and sometimes vanity of course and always a sense of high purpose." In his sixty-year career, he seldom wavered from this goal, even when fame and fortune came his way. Nor ...
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Yousuf Karsh's lifelong ambition was to search for a form within a face, one that could become a symbol for a life that was purposeful, meaningful, and generally virtuous. "I speak with some experience when I say that I have rarely left the company of accomplished men and women without feeling that they had in them real sincerity, integrity yes, and sometimes vanity of course and always a sense of high purpose." In his sixty-year career, he seldom wavered from this goal, even when fame and fortune came his way. Nor did he discard his trademark variations in lighting style that he perfected in the late 1940s. Unchanging, too, was his genius at capturing the ephemeral expressions that would reveal his sitter's psychology, those fleeting disclosures of character and purpose his famous sitters trusted him to expose.
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