Karsh, who originally wanted to be a physician, was brought to Canada by his uncle, a photographer. He apprenticed in Boston to the portrait photographer John Garo, and in 1932 opened his own portrait studio in Ottawa. In 1941 he became internationally known when his portrait of a stern Winston Churchill appeared on the cover of Life Magazine. The story behind the portrait is now legendary: the photograph captured Churchill's reaction when Karsh pulled a freshly lit cigar from the prime minister's mouth. Since then, Karsh has photographed thousands of illustrious men and women -- Elizabeth II, John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keefe, Edward Steichen, Jawaharlal Nehru, Pablo Casals, Nikita Khrushev, Ernest Hemingway, plus many others -- and each portrait is a syntheses of the personality and public role of the subject. Karsh prefers to photograph people in their own environment and travels widely doing so. His portraits, usually made with an 8 x 10-inch view camera, are carefully posed and lit and his prints typically have deep, rich blacks, often with the subject's face and hands highlighted.