Yusuf Karsh (real name: Hovsep Karshyan) was born in 1908 in the city of Mardin in Western Armenia. As an eyewitness to the Genocide, he said, “I saw the murder of my relatives. My sister died of hunger when we were driven from village to village.”

His parents managed to send him to his photographer uncle, Gevorg Naghash, in Canada, where he lived his whole life. It was his uncle who gave him the first camera and sent him to study with another famous Armenian photographer, John Garo (Boston, Massachusetts), from whom Karsh learned to master and later opened his own studio in Canada’s capital.

With portraits of Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, Walt Disney, Audrey Hepburn, Muhammad Ali, Fidel Castro, Dwight Eisenhower and many others. He has published several albums of his work.