Yousuf Karsh was born in Mardin, a city in the eastern Ottoman Empire (present Turkey⁾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."At the age of 16, his parents sent Yousuf to live with his uncle George Nakash, a photographer in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. Karsh briefly attended school there and assisted in his uncle’s studio. Nakash saw great potential in his nephew and in 1928 arranged for Karsh to apprentice with portrait photographer John Garo in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. His brother, Malak Karsh, was also a photographer.

Winston Churchill

Pablo Picasso

Ernest Hemingway

Einstein

George Bernard Shaw

Helen Keller, with Polly Thompson

Jean Sibelius

Muhammad Ali

Frank Lloyd Wright

Jessye Norman

W.H.Auden

General Dwight Eisenhower

Jacqueline Kennedy

Fidel Castro

Pablo Casal

Andy Warhol