The photographers who worked with Marilyn Monroe have all stressed the involvement and the extreme attention that she wore to work. A parisian exhibition brings together for the first time the portraits that have drawn four of them, become intimate of the star. André de Dienes, Sam Shaw, Milton Greene and Bert Stern, one of the last to capture the smile and the body popular the actress: 240 prints hung on 1 000 m2 at the galerie Joseph, in the centre of Paris, until 22 July.
Four photographers and friends of Marilyn photographed by Milton Green. Photographed by Milton H. Greene © 2019 Joshua Greene
«The exhibition would have been impossible in the United States, where the photographers generally prefer to expose only», note Ghislaine Scratch, curated with Patrice Gaulupeau of «Divine Marilyn» in which they have negotiated the idea with the descendants of the photographers. «Of Dienes has signed the first pictures of Marilyn, she was 19 years old. Sam Shaw has followed his entire career on the filming, the sets, behind the scenes. Milton Greene has helped to break with 20th Century Fox to build with it their own production house. And Bert Stern has directed a few weeks before his death, this series of bare, unadorned» – «The last session»- sums up Ms. Scratch.
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Marilyn Monroe photographed by Sam Shaw at the beach. Photo by Sam Shaw (c) Sam Shaw Inc., courtesy Shaw Family Archives, Ltd.
Marilyn in white bikini at the beach, the panties revealed on a subway grate for Seven Year itch of Billy Wilder, in capri turquoise adjusted, sheath, fur, on trays, at home, in the studio, these images belong to the memory of the Twentieth century and the myth of hollywood.
With André de Dienes, the adventure begins in 1945. Marilyn has already appeared on the cover of magazines, but he is a photographer with a popular studio. In 1951, it is the encounter with Sam Shaw, a photojournalist for the Magnum agency, who follows her in the streets of New York city, where she greets and mingles with barges of the Fifth Avenue. «Not posing, can, him intimate there. I don’t want to take a picture of a pretty girl, but an actress at work.»
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Photographed by Milton H. Greene © 2019 Joshua Greene
«I was really impressed by its appearance, its dignity,» recalled Meta Shaw, one of the daughters of Sam come with her younger daughter, Edie, for the vernissage on Thursday evening. Meta was 15 years old, Edie 10. «The first time I saw it, Sam had invited her to the Met (the Metropolitan Museum, New York): when she arrived, walking down the street, she was radiant. I thought, this must be it an angel». Joshua Greene he was a baby, two or three years old when Marilyn Monroe was in attendance his parents in 1953. «It is silly to think that I have memories, but growing up I understood the intimacy of his relations with my family,» he smiles. To 65 years, also came for the exhibition. Manager of the archives of his father, Milton, nearly 300,000 shots, he has restored and digitized in the 90’s. «Most of the photos you see here were unusable. They were red, my father had a broken heart.»
Marilyn Monroe by Bert Stern. © Bert Stern Estate/Staley-Wise Gallery, New York/ Courtesy Galerie Dina Vierny, Paris
When Bert Stern meets Marilyn in 1962, she was 36 years old, him 32. The actress is not at best, a failure in his career and his loves. It offers a session for Vogue , and in two days and a night takes 2 571 poses. The blonde is naked, without makeup, flat stomach, behind a veil, plays with the shadows and stripped of its forms. She died a few weeks later, not without having crossed out a large red cross on the pictures that it denies account-wires in the hand, the nose shirred above the contact sheets, to keep only those which boast the best photogenic. Marilyn or the passion of the photo – who made it well.
Divine Marilyn , until 22 September. Galerie Joseph 116 rue de Turenne. 75003 Paris. The exhibition is open every day from 11h to 20h, including holidays. Night on Fridays and Saturdays till 22h.
