Horror of Highlights

This is typical of the way I sometimes chase trails down into holes in the earth and the warrens of history...after seeing the Karsh exhibit the other day I got interested in his association with John H. Garo, the socialite Boston portraitist who lived from 1870 to 1939. Karsh evidently learned a lot of things from Garo, from his public persona and flair for stylish dressing to his way of working with clients. Here's Karsh with his employer and mentor Garo:

Nice portrait, although you'll notice Karsh is out of the zone of best focus, despite leaning into it. (Too much bokeh!) There's also a portrait of Garo by Karsh, although I don't particularly like it. (It has overtones of Mortensen for me, somehow.)

Turns out a book about the two was published in 2016, called Yousuf Karsh & John Garo: The Search for a Master's Legacy. This picture's on the cover. I haven't seen the book, although the first paragraph of the Amazon description paints a picture of influence, gratitude and loyalty: 

When President Calvin Coolidge was asked to choose between the artist John Singer Sargent or the photographer John Garo to make his official presidential portrait, Coolidge chose Garo. Although unknown today, in the early years of the twentieth century, Garo was a nationally acclaimed photographer, a leader in the thriving Boston photographic community. Cultured and charming, Garo also painted watercolors, wrote poetry and counted among his friends luminaries in the worlds of music and theater. It was to this humanistic atmosphere of Garo's sky-lit studio that the fledgling photographer, Yousuf Karsh, a survivor of the 1915 Armenian Massacres, was sent by his uncle George Nakash to be Garo's apprentice. Garo was a nurturing and encouraging mentor. His three years with Garo transformed young Karsh's life and influenced his original desire to portray those personalities who made a positive impact on our world. Garo died in 1939, a victim of the Great Depression, ill health, and changing photographic taste. Karsh, then still a struggling photographer in Canada, was devastated to discover Garo's studio ransacked and many of his portraits missing. Thus began a forty-year odyssey by Karsh to discover his mentor's portraits and preserve them for posterity. Drawing on meticulous research and on Karsh's personal correspondence, Mehmed Ali brings to life this intensely human journey, and the little-known story of Garo's stellar role in the history of photography in New England.

I can't vouch for that first line; the official Coolidge portrait is a painting by Charles Sydney Hopkinson as far as I can discover. (Ronald Reagan, who for some reason admired Silent Cal, had it moved to a more prominent position in the White House.) This might be the picture Amazon mentions, but I don't know.

Here's another portrait of Garo, this time by his fellow portraitist and friend William Manahan, about whom there is even less information online than there is about Garo:

Next I got curious about what Garo's own work might have looked like, and took a poke around to see if I could find any examples. There's a nice page of them at the Harvard Art Museums website. John Garo seemed to share that horror of highlights that was considered stylish back in pictorialist days. The fashion was, the murkier the better. There's a story of Steichen in his youth developing by inspection under a dim green light in his darkroom with his hand on a pitcher of restrainer, ready to stop development instantly at the first sign of a little density. Makes me chuckle.

The style hasn't aged well. Here's an example of Garo's portraiture:

John H. Garo, Prof. George L. Kittridge [sic]

The subject is the formidable Harvard didact George Lyman Kittredge, who is credited with one of the most famous academic quotations never uttered. Prof. Kittredge was notoriously strict with undergraduates, once permanently banning a student from class for excessive coughing. Legendary for scholarly rigor, Kittredge spoke a number of languages including Greek and insisted that Harvard doctoral candidates do likewise. However, the great man had never bothered to earn a Ph.D. himself. Upon being asked why, he is supposed to have said, "But who would examine me?"

It's a great line, but Kittredge probably never said it. According to the all-purpose mid-century man of letters Clifton Fadiman, Kittredge said the question had never been put to him and that he wouldn't have answered like that if it had. But there was no doubting his faith in his own erudition. When Kittredge retired in 1936, the New Yorker published a cartoon that featured Shakespeare himself sitting in on one of the great professor's English 2 classes at Harvard, busily taking notes about the meaning of his own plays.

Wending back to Karsh and Garo, I think you could fairly say that Karsh, with his theatrical lighting, more than made up for his mentor's horror of highlights! I also think the younger man is unquestionably the better portraitist. Whatever you think of them, Karsh's portraits still seem vibrant and alive (and, notably, more individual in approach), while Garo's have become musty period pieces.

I personally like portraits, and, understandably, I have a special affection for portraits of photographers. I first encountered the portrait at the top of this post in one of the books Ken Tanaka recommended, Karsh: Beyond the Camera by David Travis. That seems the book to start with, if you want to be entertained by some reading about these past masters of the art.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Here’s the situation

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Howard Sandler: "Let’s not forget about Karsh’s first teacher, his uncle George Nakash. I can see some if the origins of Karsh’s style in George's work."

Steve Higgins: "Re 'I personally like portraits, and, understandably, I have a special affection for portraits of photographers....' There is a book called Photographers and Their Images by a photographer name of Fi McGhee, which you may find interesting, if you haven't come across it already. It pairs photographers' picks of their own work with a portrait of them by Ms. McGhee.

"By coincidence, it has an introduction by Karsh."

Itruls: "I am reminded of this."

Comments

[Rob Campbell]

With all that time devoted to the pursuit of this arcane stuff, you could have written a chapter in your future book!

John C. will be most upset with you (I think).

Discipline!

;-)

Rob

[Andrew Molitor]

But for the great portraitist, lighting is secondary. It is about the subject, about the connection between the photographer and the subject, about finding and creating that moment when the posture and gesture is, often indefinably, right.

Look at the hands in Garo's pictures, and you will see in an instant what young Karsh learned from him.

[James Bullard]

I thought I had a copy of that book but apparently not. At least I can't find it.

As a young photographer with illusions of running a portrait studio, I admired Karsh and his work. He lived and worked just 2 hours across the border from where I lived and I often thought of going to see him but sadly I never got around to doing so. My life might have been different in positive ways had I done so.

[Xf Mj]

Great post. I confess I like the “horror of highlights” style. Could you think out loud about that particular turn of phrase, elaborate? I’m seeing the style, I like the phrase, but I’m having a hard time linking the two. “Risen out of the murk, floats the head and hands... softly now... please please please no strong highlights!” is my best guess at your elaboration.

[Herb Cunningham]

No question Karsh is the better photographer-I studied his work 60 years ago and it is still good to see it.

[Dave Riedel]

I think I enjoy these articles about historical photography and photographers better than techno-articles regarding photographic gear.

[David Comdico]

It's interesting that around the same time Garo was trying to emulate Rembrandt within the halls of Harvard, August Sander was in a small town in Germany re-inventing photographic portraiture (with tools that were old-fashioned at the time) and photographing every strata of society. Underneath our supposed egalitarianism, America is a rigidly socially-stratified culture and has always been. It's also further irony that the wealthy, in seeking to flatter themselves in their portraits, end up as figures of kitsch within the history of photography. Art is a great balancer.

Similarly, I've never taken a shine to Karsh. His technique is unquestionable but in his great pains to flatter his subject - to either create or burnish their public image - he seems to obscure their personality rather than reveal it.

[William Schneider]

Fascinating lineage. Take one more step and you'll find that Herman Leonard, the late photographer of jazz legends, had worked for Karsh when he was just out of college.

You can see Karsh's influence in Leonard's approach to lighting, but the "sittings" became much less formal.

[marcin wuu]

Funny thing, Karsh and Mortensen are my favourite portraitists, despite being so different. Along with a handful of others that deserve a piece written by you Mike, like Hurrell, or Halsman.

[RICHARD .Newman]

As I look at the imaages on the Harvard page, I wonder whether they were originally as dark as they are now. I don't know how the original prints were processed, but it is possible that they may have darkened over time. WHile they clearly were never "high key" images, I wonder if they were always so dark.

[Richard Tugwell]

Thanks for the prompt. Spent an enjoyable time perusing the Karsh website - although I'd like to see the prints. Apart from the photographic attributes, the roll-call of personalities is quite absorbing

[John London]

Personally I quite like those Garo portraits! They are very well light, they make the face the prominent subject, the expressions are fitting for the time and all are well viewed and leaving the torso in a subdued but supporting roll. I feel you may be being a little harsh on the highlights.

[DB]

Mike, I love the stories you regale us with. Thank you.

[Ian Bilson]

When presented with the bill for his portrait the Admiral exploded. "Mr Karsh- I could buy a Battleship for this amount!."But Admiral,you could not give a Battleship to your girlfriend ".

[JOHN GILLOOLY]

Mike, I think I posed a question to you years ago about Karsh after looking at a collection of his portraits of the Marshall Supreme Court that is housed at BU Law School. I found the prints to be very dark in the same way I think you are describing of Garo? Compared with the tones we see today, the images seem very dark overall, with even the highlights not coming anywhere near white. They are only highlights relative to the general darkness off the rest of the tones. I haven't seen any other prints of Karsh, so I wasn't sure if this is typical of all of his work? But I guess we can see where this came from.

John
Boston

[Chris Y.]

I like all of your writing but this piece was especially enjoyable. It was brief and full of information - I learned something and I think we all did. I'm more at home with portraits than anything else; I get lost when I try nature, or street, etc. Garo himself is a great subject/sitter. Elsa Dorfman (I think) said "find a jolly person and make their picture.." He's not particularly jolly in these, but enough of his nature comes through that you expect him to jump up and shout "How sweet it is!...."

[Richard Alan Fox]

Valiant Knights of Daguerre: Selected Critical Essays on Photography and Profiles of Photographic Pioneers Hardcover – August, 1978
by Sadakichi Hartman (Author), Harold Walter Lawton (Editor)

[Nate]

Horror of Highlights, or monochromatic photographic portrait in the style of Dutch Golden Age painters (Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, and Frans Hals).

[Dave Levingston]

About those highlights.

I am a long-time admirer of the work of Anne Brigman and Clarence White, Sr. Recently I traveled to Reno to see the major Brigman show at the Nevada Museum of Art. I had only seen one original print by Brigman before going to this show. Her prints are hard to find on display. I discovered from the show that she printed very dark.

Thinking about that made me aware of some connections.

When Brigman was getting started, Stieglitz made her a fellow of the Photo Secession and invited her to NYC with the promise of a show (the show never happened). But Stieglitz was not happy with the quality of the prints Brigman was producing. While she was back east, Brigman went to the first Maine workshop taught by Clarence White, Sr., where he taught her platinum printing. And he taught her to print dark, as he did.

Now Clarence White, Sr. also taught his son, Clarence White, Jr. to print. After White, Sr. died, his son continued to run the Clarence White School of Photography in NYC, and eventually moved it to Ohio University where it became the first degree-granting photography school in the US.

And, to this day, photographers who were trained at Ohio University (as I was) have a reputation for turning out dark prints.

It's a tradition. It's just what we do.

[KeithB]

Could this fear of highlights be a way to shorten the exposure time?

[Dave Levingston]

BTW, at one time Karsh was adjunct faculty at the Clarence White School of Photography at Ohio University.