Photographing Sir Winston Churchill

Yousuf Karsh's Famous Portrait, Without the Cigar!


Winston Churchill as photographed by Yousuf Karsh.

The great photographer Karsh wrote in Faces of Our Time: "Two niggardly minutes in which I must try to put on film a man who had already written or inspired a library of books, baffled all his biographers, filled the world with his fame, and me, on this occasion, with dread."

Churchill marched into the room scowling, "regarding my camera as he might regard the German enemy." His expression suited Karsh perfectly, but the cigar stuck between his teeth seemed incompatible with such a solemn and formal occasion. "Instinctively, I removed the cigar. At this the Churchillian scowl deepened, the head was thrust forward belligerently, and the hand placed on the hip in an attitude of anger."

Thus was the great wartime portrait of British defiance created... by the removal of a cigar!

Phil has some comments on modern attempts to remove Churchill's Cigar [click to read]. A museum exhibit designer has removed the great man's cigar in a profound misuse of Photoshop. [I should know]. The problem is that in doing so, the mouth is wrong. Churchill looks like he's having a stroke. They need to substitute Karsh's photograph if they want a tobacco-free alternative.

Immediately after the scowling photograph was taken, the mischevious Churchill smiled and Karsh snapped what he considered his favorite portrait of the great leader.

In Churchill's Finest Hour [click to read] Mark Riebling discusses a new biography of Churchill in City Journal.