prise was synonymous with quality, style, and
distinction. But after 120 years of artistic presence
in Que ́bec City, the Livernois Studio closed its
doors in 1974, and the whole enterprise ceased
its activities in 1979, leaving a legacy of more
than 200,000 photographs.
Among other notable photographers, the five
members of the Pinsonneault family had studios
in smaller towns: in Saint-Jean (Que ́bec), Trois-
Rivie`res, Victoriaville, Sherbrooke.
Sidney Carter (1880–1956) was one of the ear-
liest and certainly most talented of the amateur
photographers at the turn of the century who
worked toward the recognition of photography as
an art form in Canada. Largely unknown today, he
created striking images in a Pictorialist style,
including self-portraits and a portrait of writer
Rudyard Kipling.
Although most Canadian photographers were
born in either Que ́bec or Ontario, some of the
most celebrated artists in the history of Canadian
photography were immigrants, such as the Scot-
tish-born William Notman. Two notable examples
in the twentieth century are Chow Dong Hoy and
Yousuf Karsh.
A Canadian of Chinese descent who was born in
Guangdong, Chow Dong Hoy (1883–1973) had
many jobs before adopting photography as a pro-
fession, after he emigrated to Quesnel, Canada, in
- Between 1909 and 1920, Chow Dong Hoy
took some 1,500 photographs of Chinese who had
come to British Columbia as workers. Many Chi-
nese workers and gold miners and prospectors
engaged Chow Dong Hoy to make their portraits
to be sent to far-away families. During this same
period, Chow Dong Hoy also photographed with
his Kodak model ‘‘A’’ camera Aboriginal nations
including the Carriers and the Chilcotins, who were
living in West Canada, near Barkerville, British
Columbia. He later opened a general store and
gradually abandoned photography. Although he
also made many portraits of notable Canadians
and European immigrants, Chow Dong Hoy is
now cherished for his photographs of Natives and
Chinese-Canadians. After being more or less for-
gotten for some decades, an exhibition (First Son—
Portraits by C.D. Hoy) was dedicated to him by the
McCord Museum of Canadian History in Mon-
treal (Moosang 1999).
Possibly the most renowned Canadian photogra-
pher of the mid twentieth century is Yousuf Karsh
(1908–2002), an Armenian born in Mardin, Tur-
key, who was forced to leave his country in 1922.
After a short stay in Syria, he arrived in Sher-
brooke (Que ́bec), in 1924. There, Karsh learned
to be a photographer with his uncle, George
Nakash, who was already established as a res-
pected photographer-portraitist in Sherbrooke.
But Karsh wanted to learn more about his new
profession and went to work for a few years in
Boston, Massachusetts with photographer John
H. Garo, who specialized in portraits of celebrities.
Back in Canada, Karsh established himself in
Ottawa (Ontario) from 1932, and he soon became
the most respected photographer for his official
portraits, until his retirement in 1992. Almost
every official visitor of the Canadian govern-
ment—foreign leaders, kings and queens, actresses,
and even the Pope— was photographed by Karsh,
who had a studio in the Chaˆteau Laurier, an ele-
gant hotel near the Ottawa Parliament. He made
many albums and luxurious books of his most
prestigious photographs.
Most of his collection of some 11,000 portraits of
celebrities (including Canada’s foremost politi-
cians, artists and leaders, and also Winston
Churchill) were acquired by the National Archives
in Ottawa. After selling his archives, Karsh re-
turned to Boston in 1997 and stayed there until
his death, on July 13, 2002. His younger brother,
Malak Karsh (1915–2001), was also a photogra-
pher who emigrated to Canada in 1937. Like his
brother, he made official portraits for the govern-
ment of Canada; one of his pictures of the Ottawa
Parliament once appeared on the one dollar bill.
Since he worked with his brother, and to avoid
confusion, he signed his portraits only with his
first name, ‘‘Malak.’’
Another distinguished Canadian portraitist was
Roloff Beny (1924–1984), who in particular
achieved an international reputation for his lav-
ishly produced photo books. His photographs, a
large mass of which were donated to the National
Archives of Canada following his death, record the
leading figures in the worlds of dance, opera,
music, literature, cinema, theatre, fashion, and pol-
itics of the latter half of the twentieth century. One
of his best-known images is a 1959 portrait of
Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.
Sam Tata, born in 1911 to Indian parents in
Shanghai, practiced social documentary photogra-
phy in China and in the late 1940s with Henri
Cartier-Bresson, documented the final years of
Mahatma Gandhi’s India. After chronicling the
establishment of communism in China during the
1950s, he emigrated to Canada in 1956, where he
became a notable portraitist, especially of Canada’s
literary movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, shootingCANADA, PHOTOGRAPHY IN