Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting

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Stern began his career as an assistant to the art director of Look magazine in 1946, just as a yet-unknown Norma Jeane Dougherty was launching a successful modeling career. In 1949 he became the art director for Mayfair magazine, a position he held for two years before moving on to L.C. Gumbiner advertising agency. He joined the war in Korea as a photographer for the army before returning to the advertising world again.

Bert Stern’s daring attitude in creating a unique Vogue spread combined with his adoration for the actress produced fantastic images that served more so as poetic offerings to the concept of love and the power of a muse, leaving both photographer and viewer transfixed by Monroe’s unequivocal beauty. In the summer of 1962 Bert Stern, who has died aged 83, took more than 2,500 photographs of Marilyn Monroe over three sessions held in a Los Angeles hotel. The images captured Monroe in a sometimes pensive but mostly playful mood as she posed nude, variously covered by bedsheets, a chinchilla coat, a stripy Vera Neumann scarf and a pair of chiffon roses. Despite their air of carefree humour, the portraits are inescapably wistful because – along with George Barris's subsequent pictures of Monroe at Santa Monica beach – they are among the last photographs taken of the star. She was found dead at her home several weeks later. repeatedly gets off on describing her as "childlike" and "vulnerable", so far as comparing it to spying on his 12 year old girl next door as a teenager During the Korean war, Stern served in the US army as a cameraman and photographer. He established himself as a commercial photographer in his mid-20s. "I took audacious pictures that got people to want things," he wrote in The Last Sitting. He was proud of his 1955 photograph for a Smirnoff vodka campaign labelled "the driest of the dry". Bert Stern, an elite commercial photographer who helped redefine advertising and fashion art in the 1950s and ’60s but is perhaps best known for his painfully raw and poignant photos of Marilyn Monroe, taken for Vogue six weeks before her death. Mr. Stern’s half-century career had multiple peaks, including “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” his 1959 documentary film about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, which was selected in 1999 for the National Film Registry in recognition of its historical significance.Bert Stern's portraits of Marilyn Monroe were collected in a book entitled The Last Sitting. Photograph: Bert Stern/courtesy Staley-Wise Gallery New York The photo shoot is the culmination of a fantasy and a love affair. Bert Stern had idolized Marilyn Monroe since he met her at a party for the Actor’s Studio in 1955. He now finally had the opportunity to photograph Monroe and so great was his infatuation with the actress, that he referred to setting up his photo shoot as, “preparing for Marilyn’s arrival like a lover, and yet I was here to take photographs. Not to take her into my arms, but to turn her into tones…” After being discharged from the service at war’s end, Stern was undecided whether to pursue art direction or still photography. Flair had closed and Bramson now worked for a small advertising agency, Lawrence C. Gumbinner. He invited Stern to experiment with him on a campaign for Smirnoff vodka. The company wanted to switch from drawings to photography. Stern shot test stills for layouts — which were approved — and when Irving Penn turned down the job Stern was awarded the campaign. stands over her as it makes him feel powerful while she's reluctant and distant, then shouts at the crew for someone to "turn her on"

The year all of Bert’s dreams came true. He proposed shooting Marilyn for Vogue, and Vogue said yes. Bert Stern, known for his groundbreaking photographs from advertising’s Golden Age and his iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe, died Tuesday at the age of 83 at his home in New York. In tribute and memoriam, LightBox presents our feature with Stern from earlier this spring, including an interview with the original ‘Mad Man’ about his inspirations and passions.In the summer of 1962, Bert Stern was hired by Vogue to shoot a series of photos of Marilyn Monroe. The photos would become known as “The Last Sitting” and were later published in a book by that same name. This book presents the complete set of 2,571 photos. The monumental body of work by the master photographer and the Hollywood actress marks a climax in the history of star photography, both in quantity and quality. As aunique affirmation of the erotic dimension of photography and the eroticism of taking photos, the Last Sitting®it is the world's finest and largest tribute to Marilyn Monroe. Vogue had sent Marilyn the photos from the first day for approval—it was not usual practice but for Marilyn they had made an exception. “A lot of the pictures she had put markings on with magic marker, directly onto the transparency [to indicate images that didn’t reflect her own self-image]. I thought it was interesting but I didn’t think I would use them. Then the art director Herb Lubalin heard about [the crossed out frames] and said they would like to use them in a new magazine they were starting, called Eros. They talked to her PR people and they had no objections.” In 1959 Stern married the ballerina Allegra Kent, who was celebrated for creating roles for George Balanchine. They started a family and Stern set up a studio for his high-concept advertising and fashion shoots, but the work took its toll. He eventually became addicted to amphetamines and moved to Spain to recover in the 1970s. In a statement considered provocative in its day, Mr. Stern told a panel of commercial artists in 1959, “I like to put my feelings into my photographs.” That same year he received an assignment that took some effort to connect with his feelings: the makers of Spam asked him to “romanticize shish kebab made from Spam,” he told The New York Times. Mr. Stern took a crew of helpers and models to the Gulf of Mexico to shoot that one — a dreamy shot of that meat product. The client was pleased.

As a new season of Mad Men premieres, it’s perfectly fitting that the original mad man, Bert Stern, is receiving the accolades that his remarkable life and career deserve. Bert had brought a bunch of see-through scarves and beads from the Vogue accessories closet. He suggested she pose with just the scarves and nothing else. He knew this was risky. Marilyn asked her stylist what his thoughts were on this idea, and Bert recalls, “I knew my life was in his hands at that very moment. That if he said don’t you dare, we never would have taken the pictures.”The resulting film, Bert Stern: Original Mad Man, is a candid and revealing portrait of the photographer — in Laumeister’s words, it’s “an imperfect movie … dealing with the controversial nature of who people are. We are all contradictory, and if you turn a camera on anyone’s life they’ll have plenty of reason to hide.” In 2002 Stern snapped Sophie Dahl for Vogue in a homage to Monroe's poses with the chiffon roses. In 2008, he took the curious decision to more directly replicate the Last Sitting sessions, this time with Lindsay Lohan. The results were neither as fun nor as fragile as the originals. In his brilliantly revealing images, Stern camouflages his desire behind the camera, bestowing the viewer with the same power of admiration and focus as the photographer, while bringing the viewer there with him, into that moment. The intimacy in the photographs curtails the separation between the celebrity and the person; in this penetrating and self-indulgent shoot, the viewer gets a closer, more authentic, and liberating notion of the woman behind the lens. Monroe’s playful, inviting, and gracious posture flirts with the longing gaze of the photographer, presenting the exclusive and compassionate attention of a lover. The resultant images capture a potent but fleeting imaginary love affair, this time fortuitously caught on film by Stern.

Laumeister and Stern’s relationship — one of muse and mentor — is intimate and complex, and this unconventional film reflects that. “I wanted to try to keep it that way [intimate, just the two of us], because I felt that would make it special. It mirrored how he got such great pictures — he got everyone out of the room so he could get that personal connection” with his subjects, Laumeister says.I've wanted to write this article for nearly a month now and I thought it would take no time at all to gather the details of those infamous few days in 1962 when Bert Stern and Marilyn Monroe spent intimate hours at the Bel-Air Hotel. But oh, was I wrong. I had been digging for insider information, watching every documentary and reading every article, when my mother-in-law found me a copy of The Last Sitting, written by Bert Stern himself. Only in reading that book did I find out all the juicy details. is aware of the fact that she had her drink spiked with 100% vodka, yet supplies more and more alcohol during the shoot Stern excavated and preserved the poignant humanity of the real woman—beautiful, but also fragile, needy, flawed—from the monumental sex symbol. In our armored, airbrushed age, his achievement feels almost revolutionary. His marriage collapsed, as did his health and his finances. “I was broke. I shipped everything I owned into a twenty-foot container and went to Spain to stay with a friend.” His marriage was irreparably damaged, but he returned to New York and set to work, trying to rebuild his life.