317. Churchill's Photographer: From Escaping Genocide to MLK

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0:35Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durimple. So today we're going to talk about another photographer. We brought you the monstrous Heinrich Hoffman in the last episode. This man, though, very much a goodie, I think, in comparison. and he's so famous during his lifetime that he went by just the one name Karsh K-A-R-S-H and this is a man who produced I mean thousands of images but by far the most famous is the one that's dubbed the roaring lion portrait of Winston Churchill now you're thinking I haven't seen anything by Karsh you have if you live in Great Britain just take out a five pound note and look at the picture on that note because it is that roaring lion picture of um karsh's of winston churchill and it was one that sort of came to symbolize the defiance of the british isles in the face of the nazi thread but it's also um half the pictures you've ever seen from the 1950s early 1960s i had no idea until you sent me uh the kind of snapshots of uh many of the uh great stars of that era, how many are by him?

1:49And, you know, the famous image of Dali with his pencil moustache, I mean, Audrey Hepburn, half the most famous images of that era are by this one photographer. Yeah. And, you know, a man who comes from such a background to suddenly be taking pictures, like you say, of Hollywood film stars, but also sort of in politics, leaders of the world. I mean, he's the man who takes one of the last pictures of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on his feet. He takes pictures of Nehru. He takes King Faisal. He's David Ben-Gurion, Haile Selassie, Nikita Khrushchev. I mean, he's got pictures of Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein.

2:32You know, some of the really iconic pictures of these people that you absolutely have seen. But you may not know that they're all by this one man. Edmund Hillary, you know, that really sort of famous picture of Hillary sort of against a moody background with his cagoule sort of pulled up. And the famous picture of Hemingway with his beard in his woolly knit that's on the back of all his paperbacks today. That was a cush. I had no idea how these images. Bogart with his hands extended. Castro sitting in a kind of sofa in a heap. all this period absolutely some of the most iconic most famous pictures all by this one man yeah so how is it that this one man has access you know was he born into some sort of you know nobility was he you know were doors open to no not at all this man's background is every bit as fascinating as his portfolio so let's talk about his name was Yusuf Karsh that was his full name he was born on December the 23rd in 1908 in a place called Madan in the Ottoman Empire, now part of modern-day Turkey.

3:42That's a place you're quite familiar with, Willie. It is a place. I spent a lot of time, though a while ago, when I was doing my book From the Holy Mountain, because it's an area, and this obviously ties up directly with Karsh's childhood. It was an area scarred by terrible massacres in the First World War. This was a period when Russia came in from the east, the Ottoman Empire was defending itself, and the idea spread that the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, particularly the Armenians, were a fifth column. The young Turk government decided to commit this terrible genocide of the Armenians from 1915, but which also affected the Suriani, who were the other Christian community, the Syriac Christians of Mardin and Midyat.

4:32And in 1994, I spent a year in the Middle East getting the testimony of the Christians of the Middle East about their various troubles. But one of the most compelling stories was the story of the Armenian genocide, very much set around the area that Kash had been brought up in Mardin. And it was a terrible, terrible tale because many, many were carried off and done to death in death marches to the Syrian desert. Others went into hiding. A few hid and defended themselves in mountaintop villages. And I think this is the sort of area specifically where Kash was brought up. You had these little communities of Christians sitting on hilltop towers, literally being besieged by Ottoman troops.

5:21Kash tells this story and he tells it very well, although he dwells on his life much less than he does on the photographs of the people that he took in his lifetime. He does describe this sort of a little, at least a little bubble of happiness in his childhood. You know, his family didn't have very much, but it was a loving family. He talks about, you know, his father being basically illiterate, but having a love of beauty, especially his mother, who sort of really appreciated aesthetics. And he remembers things like really wonderful things. And you can imagine the way he describes it, sort of scraping sugar from green leaves, a type of manna, as he describes it, and letting the sugar dissolve on his tongue.

6:07So that is his memory of his very early childhood. Mardin is on the edge of a plateau, and you look down on the plain of Mesopotamia below you, the Euphrates and the Tigris, This incredible floodplain stretches out for hundreds of miles. And you can see right down one direction to Syria and another direction towards Iraq. And Mardin is up on the first sort of range of the mountains above the plains of Mesopotamia. It's one of my favorite, favorite areas, but not a place you wanted to be in 1915. No, not in 1915. And Kash is only eight years old at that time. He's just a little boy and this is the time that the Ottoman Empire is in World War I aligned with Germany and Austro-Hungary.

6:53The ruling committee of Union and Progress, the CUP or the Young Turks, as William's already mentioned, were very suspicious of Christian minorities. And the spotlight falls on Armenians in particular. and the deportation and resettlement of Armenians takes place, which in reality was a campaign of just mass killings. And historians describe it as the Armenian genocide. And if you want to know more about that, we did this in great detail in one of our previous episodes with Eugene Rogan. It has none of the industrial efficiency of the Nazi Holocaust. This is not an autobahn to the heart of darkness, so much as a rutted cart track.

7:36The Armenians are not sent off to organize gas chambers. They're marched through the desert, left to die of starvation and thirst in many cases. Others are just cut up by cavalry or beaten and bludgeoned to death. And it was particularly the Armenian middle class who got targeted. Many of the Armenians were bankers or small shopkeepers, or as in the case of Kash, they were photographers. Many of the great photographers of the Ottoman Empire, Abdullah Fraz, there's a whole bunch of Armenians. And indeed, the greatest photographer of modern Turkey was Armenian. Guler, originally Gulerian. Ara Guler was the magnum photographer who produced many of the most famous images of modern Turkey.

8:25And anyway, and I think, was his father a photographer? Was it a hereditary job? No, it was an uncle of his. But we'll come to one of his uncles who sort of escapes earlier than Karsh manages to and sets up in Canada. But we'll come to that in a minute. There were other uncles there in this sort of this turmoil that William's describing. Hits his family directly and fully. His uncles are denounced for supposed crimes. And they are taken in the middle of the night and they are put in prison. A little eight-year-old, Yusuf Karsh, is the one who has to take food to them in the prison. and it's because his mother says you know you're least likely to have stuff taken from you um and to be you know bullied by the the big turkish soldiers um if if you know you were any older they would certainly take what you've got and maybe take you um and so he does this he goes to the jail every day to take two parcels his mother says take two parcels for your uncles because one the guards will take the other maybe may reach my brother's mouth you know it's a very moving thing And then one day, you know, he's just told very bluntly by his family, you don't have to do the run anymore because word has come that both uncles are dead.

9:38And in his words, he says one had been suffocated in a cupboard in which he'd been forced to stand for hours or even days without water and food and without air to breathe. And the other had been thrown alive into the well. and this sort of second section of childhood you know sort of the manna from heaven until the age of seven and then from eight he descends into hell like many of the Armenian Christians who are living in this area attacks are increasing there are raids there are disappearances and he describes what he sees himself he says I saw with my own eyes a dead baby hanging on a butcher's hook which was used to suspend a sheep after slaughter cruelty for its own sake was everywhere And so he takes, just imagine this tiny little boy, takes to traveling to and from school with stones in his pockets because he's always expecting to be stoned by the Turks.

10:30And he says, and occasionally I would throw a stone back in self-defense. And when I tell my mother that I'd retaliated, she would say, but don't you see, if only they knew what you were doing, they wouldn't do it. It's just ignorance. So even then, you know, sort of, you know, she's lost her brothers. There is all hell breaking loose. There is this sort of voice of humanity coming from his own. I interviewed survivors from this. In Diabaka, there was one woman remaining who was a survivor not far from Mardin, where Kars was brought up in a village called Einwardo. Many of the Suriani defended a fortified church.

11:08And for two years, they fended off the local constabulary who were besieging them. and I'm amazed that Kars survived at all because most of the Armenians were led off in these great convoys and clubbed to death or starved and killed in the desert and very few survived whether it was because they were in a remote part of the town of Mardin or I don't know how because I mean there was something like you know 95 % casualties and when the young Turks government decided to round up the population, they did it with some thoroughness. So he was unusual to survive if he wasn't in one of these little fortified redoubts which defended themselves.

11:54Yeah. I mean, it's almost a slow death that he describes because, you know, it becomes harder and harder for his family to find food until 1922, where, you know, the father can't trade, his mother can't buy anything. And all he remembers is hunger. And he says, you know, for years during the worst period of the persecutions in Armenia, we didn't see a piece of good bread, much less white bread. It was black bread, very rough, made from oats and barley, and I don't know what else. So coarse, you could hardly swallow it. And he describes this sort of one day when he receives this piece of white bread with a golden crust.

12:27And he says, it comes to symbolize to me everything that life was intended to be. White bread was the ideal life to have this cake-like bread for the rest of eternity, that would have been heaven itself. And you know where there is hunger, there's sickness. And a typhoid epidemic sweeps through Mardin at this time. It kills his little sister later that same year. And as heartbreaking as that loss is, there is something worse in this poor man's young life. And he writes about it later in his memoir. He says, you know, the epidemic was so severe that no burial service could be arranged for my sister.

13:06And at last, my Aunt Lucia found two men who agreed to take the body away for burial. And I apologize to my readers for not sparing them. But I do remember to my horror, when Aunt Lucia later revealed to me, these men had not taken away my little sister's body to bury it, but for another purpose. All I can say is Mardin was starving at the time. and those stories of cannibalization during those massacres they they weren't unusual they weren't unique what he and his family were going through it wasn't a singular experience so you know with this sort of suggestion of cannibalism and these absolutely demonstrative um horrors going on around him his family just decided they can't stay anymore they have to get to Syria and Karsha at this time, you know, they've stuck it out in their home, in their lands, until he's about 14 years old.

14:01So he packs a sketchbook in his bag, and he and his family are packed off with all they can carry. This is actually specifically 1922, which is a second wave of this. What happens in 1922 is that the Treaty of Sèvres has given the French a chunk of the land just to the south of Mardin, and meanwhile the Greeks have invaded Anatolia in 1922 and are then being driven back so this is the same year as the episode we did on the fire of Smyrna and there's a second wave of Christians that leave at this time I again interviewed refugees from these columns who are still alive in Aleppo in the days but when Aleppo was still up and running before the civil War.

14:44And there are entire churches of survivors and their families from the second series of deportations and exoduses. As in 1915, you get these pathetic caravans of refugees with no possessions streaming through the empty desert, starving and short of water. And many of those end up, as Kasha's family did, in Aleppo. Aleppo is later under the French. So for both those reasons. It becomes a refuge for the Christians and is today the biggest Christian town, I think, in the time at least. But it almost didn't happen. He almost didn't survive, just like many of the people that you interviewed who would have lost countless family members to these death marches.

15:31Because at every single hamlet or village, there are people extracting prices, permission to to go through so he describes it takes 29 days to complete this this journey that should have just taken less than two days by train but of course they have to do it by foot and they are they are robbed and stripped of just not dignity but every penny every coin every piece of jewelry along the way and um there is this this one moment which is just on the road to Syria which is so awful and graphic. Just imagine this. So he's on the road and he says, I made a mistake that could have forfeited our freedom and actually much, much more.

16:14So they stop before this village and the Turks are at this border between the village and their onward journey. So let's show you, we want to show you a river. Come and see this river. It's really, you've got to see this river. And they take this kid and a few others to see this river that is just full of decomposing bodies. You know, he says, you know, from its surface protruded everywhere the bones of human beings, skulls, femurs, ribs, there could be no mistake. And so Cash being, you know, the boy with the sketchbook, foolishly tries to sketch this, what he calls the last bitter landmark of my journey.

16:56And he says, of course, I couldn't foresee the consequences. is when the Turks saw I was scribbling something, they set up a cry that I was a spy. And hearing the commotion, I hastily crumpled up the piece of paper and I threw it into a creek. Needless to say, the paper was recovered and my father was confronted with it. In some manner, he managed to extricate us. What he said, why they listened, I don't know. But my mother told me it cost him a very last piece of silver coin. So, you know, they get to Syria, William, but almost didn't. And just imagine being that little boy thinking you're the reason.

17:32I sat in a circle in 1994 in the Baron Hotel. The Masloumians were another Armenian family who set up this extraordinary hotel which Agatha Christie and T. Lawrence and all sorts of people stayed in. And they gathered the survivors for me from this march. And I interviewed them in 1994. Every one of them will now be dead. But they all told these terrifying stories. And one or other thing had saved them. One was a cobbler that the Ottomans needed because they needed boots. One was a friend of the governor that had done him a favor in early life. And so on and so forth. And most of them were led out beyond this into what was like a very primitive death camp in the desert outside Aleppo.

18:22where they were ridden down by cavalry. But handfuls of survivors continued in Aleppo until 1922 when the French came and they were safe. And this is Karshi's story. You can imagine the kind of pressure on this family that has already been living in absolutely unthinkable dire peril, that they reach Syria and they start trying to scrape together some kind of a life that they've left everything. Many of the Armenian refugees in Aleppo are doing the same thing. But because Karsha's come so close to death, because they've seen a little girl from their family, his own sister, die and taken away then and the unthinkable happening to that poor little body, they decide that the best thing they can do is send Karsha way, somewhere safer, somewhere he might be able to earn money, maybe send something back home to help the family.

19:19And one of his uncles, who'd left in 1890 for Canada, had set up a little photo studio in Ottawa. And he was doing fairly well. It was all right. He was making a living. He was sending a little bit of cash home. And it was decided that cash should go and join him. So they really push hard for months and scrape together the funds that would need to send little teenage age cash to go and live with him. Now, just imagine this is a traumatized boy, okay, who has seen the worst that humanity can do to other human beings, who is being sent to a country where he neither has language. He has one connection.

19:58He has no society. He has no family apart from this one uncle. And he sort of washes up in Canada with not one word of English, just the clothes on his back in a tiny bag. But the resilience of this guy, because he's still, you know, there's not one word in his memoirs of any kind of, feel sorry for me. I kind of, you know, what's that word? Self-pity. None at all. Because he sees this new world is going to be better, even if it's bad, than the horror that he's left behind. He feels reborn and as he says in his memoirs, he will never go back to Turkey again. Join us after the break where we find out what this new life promises the young Kash.

20:48Welcome back. So Kash has finally escaped that hellscape of the Armenian genocide and is working in Canada with his uncle, a man called Nakash. And Nakash's story is also tragic. him and he has lost every single member of his family in the violence that Karsh has just left behind so he has no one and Karsh only has him and this man is is is really kind he sort of realizes very quickly that this is a boy who has a huge talent and an eye for art so he he teaches him how to use a camera and this is the first time that this kid who had a sketchbook until now and used to sort of do compositions in quick drawings has this novel new machine and he's a really quick study and he begs his uncle teach me everything you know he's particularly obsessed with lighting subjects because he wants them to look like paintings and that will become a hallmark of his work from from for the rest of his life and his uncle is yeah okay you know i'll teach you about lighting but gosh for god's sake we've got to make money okay so it's all very well me teaching you how to light things and taking an hour over the lighting but you know for god's sake we just need to get them in and get them out and get them in and get them out and the main income at that time for you know nakasha's studio is photographing soldiers and sailors and so you know kasha's sort of reluctantly but you know he owes his uncle everything he falls into line and he does these rather boring things that he's forced to do.

22:17But he's still, you know, in his own time, just imagine, he's a man who's got freedom, but all he does is work. Either he works in the studio, or he takes himself off to learn more about his craft, and he loves nature. So instead of sketching, he takes his camera out to all these sort of romantic, misty landscapes around Ottawa, and he takes countless, I mean, if I may say, rather boring pictures of trees and um you know this is this is all that he cares about morning noon and night he lives and breathes his camera and his lighting um and his uncle actually you know because he loves this kid so much you know really respects this kid enters one of his pictures even though kash doesn't know it into a competition and kash wins and it becomes very clear under underplaying his uh his uh nice pictures of trees if they win all these prizes i've never seen a bad cash photograph i think he's a bit of a genius have you seen the pictures of trees i mean they're trees i've taken many pictures of trees myself they're trees so anyway it it does become very clear to um uncle nakash when he sees that you know his nephews won this prize that he can't teach him anymore and there is something bursting to get out of this boy so good on him good on uncle nakash who does need him in the studio you know could really do with his help to make some money.

23:36But he says, okay, I'm going to send you away. There is this expat community in Canada and America who've managed to get out. So he manages to persuade this notable photographer in Boston to take him under his wing. And that man is John H. Garrow, who has also lost his entire family in the Ottoman Empire. Also Armenian, yeah? Also Armenian, yeah. And Garo is a name. Garo is a man people recognize and he does the kind of thing that Karsh is just desperate to learn, which is taking a photograph and looking beyond what the person wants to show you. And Garrow as well is sort of like, you know, almost his spirit animal because he's sort of this gorgeously avuncular character.

24:23If you imagine, if you watch the Wombles ever, Uncle Bulgaria. Yeah, he's cuddly and he's, you know, sort of ostentatiously dressed and he has these cravats and, you know, a very actually deeply kind face. And he also thinks like a painter, which is so good for Karsh. He thinks like a painter. He had been a painter before becoming a photographer. And he totally understands his young Ward's obsession with light. So he teaches him everything that he knows about lighting, about positioning a subject, about getting an insight into who they are as you take the picture. And the one, you know, the best thing that he teaches, Kash, is that chat is all.

25:09And yeah, it's everything. It's everything. It's everything to a photographer. That's what you want to do. quote in Karsh's memoir. He says, one of Garrow's great gifts was his ability to fascinate, to enchant the subject, to such an extent that the latter was really unaware of the act of photography. It was not a question of having him hold an artificial pose, which is fatiguing and can be deceitful. When Garrow held the bulb behind his back, the subject's interest centred on whatever Garrow focused it upon, some abstract topic perhaps or something in the studio, but something meaningful, a floral arrangement, a piece of tapestry.

25:43And when he raised his finger, he said, hold, but not in an attention creating way, just suspending time for a few instances. It was like cooking certain dishes slowly. Perfection in cooking is not always achieved with a high burner. It's a lovely quote. Isn't that lovely? Yeah, I love that. Isn't that such a great, great thing? But too soon, you know, he's living his absolute best life. You know, he's never been as happy, not since, you know, sort of eating the crystallized sugar and the green leaves back in Mardin. And he's so happy. But it's time to go back to Ottawa because, as he says, there was no quota for Armenians in America.

26:20So he doesn't have permission to stay. So he takes all the learning and he goes back to his uncle's studio. Poor Nakash. He's sort of like, oh, OK, when you're coming back, I really need, I could do with some help. you know we've got floors to sweep and you know sort of sailors and soldiers to photograph you coming back it is a really again amazing thing about Kash because he sees gold in what many people see as trash so I mean I don't know when I worked as a local reporter the last thing you wanted to be sent on you knew you'd annoyed the editor if you were sent to do something to do the local council.

26:59Oh, God. Really? Oh, okay. There's a sort of a, I don't know, some motion to be passed on bin collection. Oh, you can go, Anita. You're the youngest and disposable. So, you know, he actually volunteers to go to these ostensibly really boring political conferences that take place in Ottawa, Ottawa, as a major city. And he does this thing that, you know, poor Nakash is just looking at him going, what are you doing? Just take the bloody camera. But no, he's got to take his lights. He goes sort of hulking all of this stuff to these really very long, dull, boring events. But it pays off because there is this Imperial Economic Conference that takes place in 1932.

27:44And Karsh manages to get this amazing, lovely photograph of Neville Chamberlain and Sean O 'Casey, the playwright, who's come in with the Irish delegation. And it's through just sort of the charm that he's learned from his uncle and also from his mentor that he has the courage, even though English is faltering. He's just learned English. And he falls in love at this time with a tall and glamorous actress called Solange Gaultier. And through this girl, who is an actress, he gains entry to the world of theatre. and begins taking pictures of visiting theatre companies. And this, again, is more into the sort of storytelling as well as the portraiture for which he will become famous later in life.

28:31I mean, it's almost like, you know, everything in his life now is pointing him into a certain direction. And this sort of crossover between art and politics is eventually going to lead to the photograph that's going to launch him as Karsh that we know today. and it is because there is a man who straddles those two worlds. You know him because we've done a bonus episode on him. John Buchan, yes, a.k.a. Lord Tweedsmore, is a very important man in Canada, in Ottawa at this time. He's the Governor General. If you want to hear that one, by the way. Yes, yes. He is. He is the Governor General. But if you want to hear the whole episode that we did on Buchan, become a member of the Empire Club.

29:14EmpirePodUK.com is where you can join. empirepoduk.com it is an absolutely Murray was just an amazing guest. Murray Pittock fabulous, fabulous episode of Murray Pittock on John Buchan, author of the 39 Steps. Anyway so between 35 and 40 John Buchan aka First Baron Tweedsmure serves as Governor General of Canada as Willie says and he's actually been to a number of these arts and drama festivals he loves the arts and he notices Karsh has been taking photographs of the actors and the dancers um and and he notices his work you know for for its beauty and so he sort of says who's who's this dude who's this guy and the name comes back oh it's Karsh he's going out with one of the actresses Solange we'll get we'll get his details from Solange and he asks Karsh to come and take his photograph and it is it's nerve-wracking at first um isn't it Willie I mean it's you know this is a really important man governor general asking to see you and take you to come and take a photograph one of the great photographs um ever which is the famous photograph of john bucken in full native canadian feather headdress when we were doing the um bucken episode and i was google imaging uh images to uh uh tweet the episode out this of course was the first one that we all fell on because it's by far the most striking picture ever taken of Buchan.

30:42And it turns out it's not just you and me, Anita, who like this image. It was a favourite of the Queen. And the young Queen Elizabeth saw this and asked for a copy, which is there apparently in Buchan Palace. So this is Karsha's first entry into this whole wider world. It gets taken, it gets snapped in 1936, chief Buchan portrait. But that year, of course, was going to ring all sorts of bells because it is that year that the world is heading towards war. And you get this sort of, you know, as a build up towards World War Two is occurring, suddenly world leaders are on the move. And there are intense meetings taking place, you know, trying, you know, sort of horse trading, will you come in?

31:24If we do this, will you do this? And all eyes are on America and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, if you heard our Yalta conference episodes, you know, was really reluctant to get involved in the war, completely reluctant. But that doesn't stop others lobbying him. So in 1936, FDR makes a trip to Canada. He's the first American president in office to do it. The press corps, of course, is out in force. First American president to visit Canada. It's unexpected, isn't it? Well, they're just next door, aren't they? Yeah, I'd have thought they'd pop over. A phone call would suffice. The press, of course, you get penned back, if you're a member of the press at these things with great dignitaries.

32:07But gosh, because he's done the graft and he's done all these sort of local politics and, you know, sort of the state politics things, he knows people. And he also, because John Buchan loves him, has become quite friendly with the staff who wait on Buchan. And so, you know, he's sort of looking at them with these puppy dog eyes, like, what the hell am I meant to do? I haven't even got my lights. I really need my lights. What am I meant to do in the press pen? And so one of them sort of says, come over here come here I'll take you to a side room and I just need you to be patient okay just wait for a couple of hours it'll be worth it so Karsh is a completely patient man he has no idea if he's going to get anything at all but he sets up all his lights and he's waiting and finally you have Mackenzie King the Prime Minister of Canada and his mate Lord Tweedsmeer John Buchan and Roosevelt walk in.