Albert Einstein

Karsh, Yousuf, 1908-2002 · 1948

Among the tasks that life as a photographer has set me, a portrait of Albert Einstein had always seemed a 'must' - not only because this greatest refugee of our century has always been accounted by all the world as the outstanding scientist since Newton, but because his face, for all its rough grandeur, invited and challenged the camera. ~ When I saw him for the first time at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study, in February 1948, I found exactly what I expected - a simple, kindly, almost childlike man, too great for any of the tricks or postures of eminence. Yet one did not have to understand his science to feel at once the power of his mind... He spoke sadly, yet serenely, as one who had looked into the universe far past mankind's small affairs. In this humour my camera caught him... the portrait of a man beyond hope or despair (Karsh, 1976).