Yousuf Karsh was an Armenian-Canadian portrait photographer born in Mardin, Turkey; his family fled during the Armenian genocide and Karsh arrived in Canada in 1923 where he lived with his photographer uncle.

Karsh opened his own photography studio in 1932; he rose to international fame with "The Roaring Lion", his 1941 portrait of Winston Churchill which appears more recently on the 2016 design of the Bank of England £5 note. Karsh continued to photograph notable figures until the 1990s, including Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1993.

Karsh is known to have visited Henry Moore in Perry Green on at least three occassions: a photo of Moore with the plaster Family Group (LH 269) in the National Portrait Gallery was taken on a visit in 1949; on 31 October 1972 a second visit was recorded by Errol Jackson; correspondence and diary entries in the Henry Moore Archive show Karsh planned a third visit in May 1973, and photographs in the National Portrait Gallery showing Moore with the fibreglass Arch (LH 503b) and Girl: Half-Figure (LH 572) dated to 1973 may come from that visit.

Karsh also photographed Moore in Italy, along with the sculptors Jacques Lipchitz and Marino Marini, in 1970.