Lilly Koltun – Director Portrait Gallery of Canada - Copyright of the Book: Septembre de la Photo 2006, Yousef Karsh - Portraits, Cultures Nice

1- This is based on his immigration record which also his ship as the S.S. Canada (which may have docked in Halifax the night before), and his date and place of birth as «15 years» in « Myardine, Syria » (Karsh later always gave his birthday as Dec 23, 1908.) He signed his landing card “Youseph Karsh”. He was held until January 3, 1924 when he was released to his uncle. Information provided to the author by telephone by Canada immigration, April 28, 1994. 
2- Karsh was in Sherbrooke from January 1924 to likely the first half of 1927 (3.5 years with Nakash), in Boston from about the second half of 1927 until possibly about the first of 1930 (3 years with Garo; he may have stayed later or returned intermittently); then again in Sherbrooke from possibly about the second half of 1930 to the late spring or early summer of 1932 (2 years with Nakash again). 

3- The end of Karsh's period with Garo may shortly predate Karsh's Canadian naturalization on August 26, 1930. That record, interestingly, gives his name as «Karsh, Joseph A.» Later, the Ottawa city directory for 1932 lists a “Karsh, Y.A.” residing with jJohnPowis. This brief appearance of a middle initial has not yet been clarified. 

4- Yousuf Karsh, Portraits of Greatness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1959) p. 11. 

5- Many of these images would have been in the 2,522 entire sitting, together with selected negatives from other sittings, which he excised from his collection for space reasons in 1972 when he moved his studio from its original location on Sparks street to the Chateau Laurier, the preferred billet of visiting celebrities. 

6- It was likely Saturday, October 29, 1932 and Solange used the name Gauthier-Dunnet (presumably from her previous annulled marriage) playing the leading role in (La Locandiera’ by Carlo Goldoni, not La belle de Haguena (sic) as stated in Karsh's autobiography. 

7-As much a journalistic as a portrait effort, it showed Colonel Henry C. Osborne, Honorary Chairman of the Festival, standing at the Ottawa Little Theatre with Rupert Harvey, the distinguished English director and adjudicator and was published in Saturday Night the week after the Festival, on May 6, 1933 , p. 11. However, this may not have been Karsh's first published photograph; in his autobiography, he recollected some of his debutantes for Powis may have appeared in Mayfair , a Toronto magazine (Yousuf Karsh, In Search of Greatness, Reflections of Yousuf Karsh. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1962). 

8- Karsh, In Search of Greatness, p.51. 

9- Practitioners in Canada begin with, for example, the late work of J. Fraser Bryce of Toronto , who was converted to it by 1897, and continue through the 1920s and 1930s with photographers such as Charles Aylett, Dupras and Cola, Robson in Winnipeg , and H. Hamilton Black in Montreal . 

10- H. Rossiter Snyder, «The Beginnings of Camera Journalism» American Annual of Photography 1931, ed. Frank R. Fraprie (Boston: American Photographic Publishing Co., 1930) p.44. Saturday Night was one of the very few exceptions in using a coated paper stock, which reproduced photographs significantly better than a daily newspaper. 

11- This was a show of some 100 prints displayed for a week at the end of September in theArtt Gallery of the Robert Simpson department store; such galleries were well-regarded venues at the time. See Madge Macbeth. «Yousuf Karsh», Saturday Night, Sept 24, 1938 , p11. 

12- Karsh, In Search Greatness, p 67. 

13- “I am invariably in a state of great mental tension when the sitting begins, yet it is imperative that my sitter should not be aware of this, (Karsh, In Search of Greatness p.109). 

14- The other nine were Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Eisentaedt, Ernst Haas, Philippe Halsman, Gjon Mili, Irving Penn and W. Eugene Smith. «The World’s 10 Greatest photographers», reprinted in The Best of Popular Photography, ed. Harvey V. Fondiller (New York: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1979) pp. 91-103; first published in popular photography, May 1958. 

15- These were a group of negatives, closer to 700, which he kept in a bank vault until 1987 when they together with the rest of his massive studio collection to that date, containing the products of some 10,530 sittings, were sold to the National Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada). A second acquisition by that institution, a donation in 1996, completed his funds. Karsh himself moved to Boston , U.S.A in 1997, where he died on July 13, 2002.