Yousuf Karsh: Charlotte Laurance

He grew up during the Armenian Genocide where he wrote, "I saw relatives massacred; my sister died of starvation as we were driven from village to village." (Dean Lucas, 2007) Karsh's work focuses primarily on portrait photography and concentration in artificial light. Karsh wrote about his own work in Karsh Portfolio that said "Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the photographer must act or lose his prize." (1967)