1915-2001
Malak Karsh was an internationally-known photographer.
Karsh and his wife Barbara lived at 292 Laurier Ave. E. (corner of Russell Ave.) for five years between 1980 and 1985. While Karsh’s older brother Yousuf became world-famous for his black and white portrait photography, Malak, as he liked to be known, became renowned for his colour photos of the Ottawa area, particularly tulips (he was one of the founders of the Canadian Tulip Festival). His photo of floating logs on the Ottawa River below Parliament Hill was featured on the Canadian one-dollar bill between 1969 and 1979.
Malak won numerous awards, including the Order of Canada, the keys to the City of Ottawa and the National Film Board’s Gold Medal. Over an almost 60-year marriage, his wife supported his career by overseeing all aspects of his business and cataloguing his extensive collection of photographs (Library and Archives Canada holds more than 200,000 of them). She died in 2017. They are both buried in Wakefield.