Julie Grahame

Yousuf Karsh & John Garo

The Karsh Estate is pleased to announce the publication of "Yousuf Karsh & John Garo:The Search for a Master's Legacy" which is out now from Benna Books. We spent months researching and clearing rights with various wonderful institutions to produce this special book about Karsh's early mentor who lived a fantastic life in Boston in the 1910s and '20s.

“Garo’s salon was my university, a noble institution at which to have been permitted to study.”

     

The young Karsh was fully in the midst of these gatherings and participated by serving as a bartender, “which service Garo seemed to associate with the handling of chemicals used in his developing room.” With dramatic flourish Garo would herald his understudy: “Now for Dr. Koussevitsky, Yousuf . . . let us have some nitric acid,” which was code for a gin and tonic. This would be followed by another rousing call: “And for Arthur Fiedler, some hypo,” which was le nom de guerre for bourbon.
  Mehmed Ali.