Most likely you’re well aware of Yousuf Karsh and his work. It’s part of the canon no doubt, but still I’d never seen this portrait he did of Albert Schweitzer.   It left me speechless.  Speechless.

This is what Karsh said was the conversation he had during the taking of this potrait: “‘Which,’ I asked this humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, ‘is the greatest of the Ten Commandments?’ ‘Christ gave only one commandment,’ replied Schweitzer, ‘and that was love.'”

photo: Albert Schweitzer, 1954. © The Estate of Yousuf Karsh.

Absolutely.  Bloody.  Remarkable.

The Schweitzer portrait is I think so fecund with poignancy for a number of reasons, one being that it’s so contemporary; if you showed it to me w/o any credits, I’d have guessed Nadav Kander shot it.

photo: Ian Mckellen I. © Nadav Kander.

Further evidence of of how seminal Karsh’s oeuvre has been in the medium can be seen elsewhere.  For instance, take a look at the light Dan Winters has been exploring recently, especially in the actor series for New York Mags 40th anniversary issue.

photo: Robert DeNiro, for New York Magazine. © Dan Winters.

vs.

photo: Ernest Hemingway, 1957. © The Estate of Yousuf Karsh.

And I’ll also include what Karsh wrote on taking this portrait of Hemingway:

I expected to meet in the author a composite of the heroes of his novels. Instead, in 1957, at his home Finca Vigía, near Havana, I found a man of peculiar gentleness, the shyest man I ever photographed – a man cruelly battered by life, but seemingly invincible. He was still suffering from the effects of a plane accident that occurred during his fourth safari to Africa. I had gone the evening before to La Floridita, Hemingway’s favorite bar,  to do my “homework” and sample his favorite concoction, the daiquiri. But one can be overprepared! When, at nine the next morning, Hemingway called from the kitchen, “What will you have to drink?” my reply was, I thought, letter-perfect: “Daiquiri, sir.” “Good God, Karsh,” Hemingway remonstrated, “at this hour of the day!”