Yousuf Karsh

HEY! ANY OF THESE PEOPLE/NAMES LOOK FAMILIAR? XP

Alexander Calder

Barnett Newman

Edward Steichen

Henry Moore

Man Ray

Pablo Picasso

Just like Annie Liebovitz, Yousuf Karsh photographs celebrities and other famous folk (this is not why I like these 2 artists, though...that's just irony). As I was looking through Karsh's work, I came across an image of Alexander Calder and recognized the name from 3D class. Then I found Barnett Newman and was like, "OMG THE BARNETT BOOK!" So I decided for this journal, I would post Karsh's portraits of artists we've learned about at DCAD (besides, I think it's more fun when you recognize the model ^_^ lol).

Anyways, I chose to post a blog about Yousuf Karsh's work because his black and white portraits are amazing. I love his choice lighting and I think it's great that his portraits aren't just the same old standard sitting poses. Some are close up, others are farther away and include parts of the room and/or artwork in the background. I also love the facial expressions. They all seem like what the person really looked like as opposed to some fake cheesy pose. They also go with the background. For instance, Henry Moore is very calm and almost expressionless in his image. Behind him is one of his sculptures, which also looks very calm and (seeing as how the figures don't have any faces) expressionless. Edward Steichen looks very intuitive, like he's pondering something as he's smoking his cigar (and I absolutely LOVE the smoke in the background, btw). Man Ray looks kind of silly and fun and playful, as does the handprint next to him, which reminds me of when kids finger paint and make handprints like that. And so on...

So, basically, I really enjoy Yousuf Karsh's portrait photography because I think they're very interesting representations of the famous people he photographs.