Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh by Maria Tippett Reviewed in Quill & Quire

Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh by Maria Tippett was reviewed in this month's Quill & Quire. Click here to read the review.

Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh
by Maria Tippett
House of Anansi Press, 2007
440 pages
81 black-and-white photographs
$39.95

Portrait in Light and Shadow tells, for the first time ever, the full story of how a young Armenian immigrant living in Ottawa in the 1930s became the most prominent portrait photographer of the twentieth century. In this groundbreaking biography, produced with the full cooperation of the Karsh estate, acclaimed writer and historian Maria Tippett reveals the consummate skill with which Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002) built and maintained his reputation over six decades.

With black-and-white images from the artist’s life and work, including his iconic photographs of Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth II, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Ernest Hemingway, Pope Pius XII, Nikita Khrushchev, John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dr. Maria Tippett is one of Canada’s most prominent cultural historians. Her books have won numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for Canadian History. Maria Tippett lives with her husband, historian Peter Clarke, in British Columbia.