Ernest Hemingway, Papa Bear

This famous photo of American literary giant Ernest Hemingway is another by the great portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh. Karsh's mastery of lighting is shown in the picture of 'Papa Bear,' a shot that somehow seems to mirror the stark minimalism of the writer's prose and capture the sense of both melancholy and raw adventure that figured in his life. The portrait, taken at Hemingway's home near Havana in 1957, offers a window into the soul of the big bearded man with elevated eyes wearing a rollneck sweater; a man both intensely imaginative and highly athletic; “A man,” recalled Karsh, “of peculiar gentleness, the shyest of men I ever photographed.” Tortured by alcoholism and ailing physical and mental health, Hemingway blew his brains out with a shotgun in 1961. Is the anguish of his world-weary existence expressed in this photo as it was in the words of his books?

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