Daniel Torok b/w Yousuf Karsh

The great danger of portraiture is when the image captures you.

A ludicrous comparison on the surface. Not borne of style or mode, of course; Karsh is perhaps the most legendary portrait photographer of all time, and his intuitive weaponisation of lighting is known specifically to create thick and vivid contrast unlike anyone else in history. At an almost exact inverse, Torok is a literal nobody who worked almost exclusively in picturesque landscaping (according to him, most of this work is lost if it ever existed) until his sudden ascension to chief official White House photographer. Launched by Torok's pair of instantly infamous portraits, we find a sudden swelling of common ground. Now, these two men have the same job.

Pablo Casals, 1954 (Yousuf Karsh)

That job is not portrait photography. That job is weaponising the images of 'Great Men' as storytelling devices. That's just the thing about Karsh: he wasn't just a portrait photographer; he was the medium to the stars of the early 20th century. I say that not with reverence but with sympathy. It's a shit and thankless job. Scour past the surface level of his most wondrous portraits, and you'll see the problem. For every Casals, a life in a frame, is a frame with no life. This royal portrait forever stands out to me as definitive of the struggle with a kind of knowingly major subject photography. The subject can never be the story, only an actor within it, but if the subject believes themselves the storyteller, you cannot hope to wield the intimate power of their image. You, the capturer, become the captive. You are subject to their narrative; you are a tool. The portrait shows Liz and Phil exactly how they wish to be perceived, an imperious collection of iconography wistfully looking outwards towards the subjects, the true object of their affection. This is easy propaganda. Karsh failed to grasp any interiority within his subjects. They craft the story of the image without him. Contrast this with, say, his Hemingways his Hensons; these are tortured men with complex interiors that have carefully crafted surfaces of lone genius clouded in darkness, and he sees that, but he doesn't stop there. In Hemingway, a gentle quietude; in Henson, a boyish exuberance, sides of themselves publically hidden but busting through the seams of their own art. These are portraits of the self the artists wouldn't have been able to paint knowingly. If you want regality, it cannot be uncomplicated, something Karsh knows well; his Churchill is one of the most famous portraits of all time, capturing through a hand on a chair and a weathered eye-brow raise the staunch eye of a storm that was concurrently reshaping the entire structure of the world. He met in Churchill's cheeks a world at war and in his hand a world that believed it could take it. Churchill probably thought his lower half would be cropped. As a portrayer of 'Great' people, you smuggle the world through them.

Prairie Farmer (Yousuf Karsh)

Sounds fucking hard. This is why Karsh's best photos are not of the stars but his Canadian assignment work of the early 50s. The greatest hits are housed here, and you can see from just a skim how quickly he keyed into a world of alleged prosperity withheld from those piecing it together. Steelworkers framed as painters sat with their canvases, parks shrouded in infinite fog, love and loss blossoming in a Ford factory, and the spectre of the parliament rendered an imperialist castle, almost medieval in appearance. Though maybe my reverence here is just a reflection of my taste. Astonishing stories, they may be, but it's hard to argue they're more technically impressive than his portraits. His portraits are squeezing toothpaste through a micro-grain sieve, and his yardwork is cutting the tube open with a knife. I'm impressed you can get anything done with the former, and of such a fine cut, but the latter gets to the heart of things much more effectively.

Nude Form (Daniel Torok)

So, what if you don't possess the once-in-a-generation technical skills of Yousuf Karsh? You tell me, pal. Much of Torok's older work no longer exists. His now-deleted WordPress shows little more than an artist looking for a voice, though his nude form portrait is nice. Interesting that he believes the lack of colour makes the piece "cold," I think it just feels intimate, the low light making quite a soft gaze of the shallow depth, though maybe that's the Karsh talking as well. Moving on to his Facebook page, we get only a handful of photos, but at least some explanation of the newfound obsession with black and white defining his Trump-era works, which is where we found ourselves today. How's he doing?

Well, look, high contrast b&w is a soft spot of mine. Otherwise, I wouldn't be talking so much about Yousuf Karsh, but Torok opts for harsh editing aftereffects that lose much of his material's texture. His Instagram is the closest thing to an official photo album, the largest repository of his work to date and mostly the same few stylistic ticks beaten over the head repeatedly. All you'll likely note is the astonishingly uncomposed portrait of Charlie Kirk, that this guy's camera loves Donald J. Trump and that if my perception of those gauzy whites is correct, Torok's obsession with black and white is all post-processing! The sacrilege! Oh, and one other thing. His portraits are, without question, the most compelling art he's ever attached his name to; it's just a question of whose art it actually is.

J.D. Vance (Daniel Torok)

A question further complicated by the Vance portrait, which (intentionally or not) captures an undercurrent of character the subject desperately wishes it could stymie. Vance's 2023 senate portrait shows what I mean insofar as it feels beamed in from another planet. The evenhanded lighting, very flat, very professional; this is the very image of the stern and serious congressman. He looks anonymous among the wave of identically photographed politicians, one of the few still successful attempts at aesthetically flattening a partisan America. Then comes Torok, a studio newby. As with the big man, Vance is shot in razor-sharp big format digital, overlighting the face until he begins to quarter-grimace, fussily processed until the texture of skin buzzes with gloss; he looks like a bug under a spotlight. Vance looks unsure, like he has something to hide, doesn't belong, and, most crucially, like a put-on facade of the man in his last portrait. It's an ugly caricature of a political portrait done to fit a man who is playing an ugly caricature of himself. I can't imagine anyone intended this, but the picture escapes the artist when the light hits the proverbial film. I'd just like to know what Vance sees in it.

You know who (You know who)

The question of Trump's portrait is far less up in the air. It is Trump's art, and we know, of all of Torok's images, that Trump personally approved of this one. The upward facing below the eye line light is the same trick preschoolers use with a torch around a campfire to tell scary stories; it's unmistakable. This image is Trump as Creature from the Black Lagoon. According to Torok, it is also a direct compositional homage to the Trump mugshot. Insane, of course, and a reverential move from the photographer. He has reoriented the mugshot from a position of po-faced concern to Trump's preferred framing, above-it and bemused power. It is an 'image that goes hard,' a confirmation of badassery, a declaration that he is the bogeyman and you better watch out! It is, in short, exactly what Trump wants it to be: a statement of position and superiority. It is emblematic of Trump's one true political superpower, to spin any interpretation of himself for gain. It is the arrest, the assassination attempt (the subsequent raised fist) and the opposition's cowardliness, everything that won the election, in miniature.

And where does that leave Torok? A willing propagandist, I fear. Trump's previous chief photographer, Shealah Craighead, photographed him with a more handsome pair of hands. Under her careful and well-oiled gaze, he appears as an element of the political apparatus just like anyone else. One that could, in fact, be bested in a room by his rivals. That will not do. Torok will give Trump his whistful Superman shots for as long as he's allowed, and more power to him. Despite all I've said, my proclivities as either an artist or a human being, I'd kill for his job. But his trade is photography, and the photo he will be remembered for is a remake of a shot done by someone else on an iPhone in two seconds, retooled by a would-be authoritarian to his own needs. He is not the author. In the words of his boss, "Sad!"