In 1957, Yousuf worked on a book titled This is the Mass with his friend, Fulton Sheen, a man who would become an archbishop in the Roman Catholic Church. Yousuf enjoyed doing photographs for four books on Catholicism.
In 1959, Solange and Yousuf published a book called Portraits of Greatness. Its photographs became the first one-man photography exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
When Yousuf’s work was shown across the country, the large prints amazed Canadians. They admired the portraits of the people who made a difference in their lives: Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (1953), pianist Glenn Gould (1957), Nobel Prize winner Dr. Charles H. Best (1958) and others.
As Yousuf’s exhibitions toured the world, visitors were excited by the photographer’s views of actor Audrey Hepburn (1956), filmmaker Walt Disney (1956), India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1956), and by a very sensitive portrait of author Ernest Hemingway (1957).
Yousuf met the pope three times. He hod never dreamed he would meet the head of the Roman Catholic Church, let alone photograph him. The first pope he photographed, Pope Pius XII, blessed some items for Yousuf in 1949. One little medal he gave to his father. Amish was thrilled.
Pope Pius XII