Photographer Bert Stern entered into legend through melancholy enchantment. He was the last to photograph Marilyn before she died in August 1962. He was born in Brooklyn in 1929 to a father who photographed children. He would soon drop out of high school and meet Stanley Kubrick while working as a courier for the magazine Look. Just like him, he was 17 years old and very talented. While Kubrick was selling his first shots, Stern was quickly climbing up the photography ladder. With a little help from the magazine’s creative director Hershal Bramson, he did his first fashion shoots. But Stern was an autodidact, and when he was drafted into the army, it was with a camera in hand that he took off for Japan.
There, his ambition came to a front with the harshness, the stealth, and the naturalness of each moment. This is how his style forged itself, in another dimension far from glamour but still profoundly romantic. When he returned in 1955, he was hired on for a Smirnoff ad campaign. He placed a glass in front of the great Pyramids of Giza so that the monument would be reflected in the drink. And that’s how he created a phenomenon; it was an innovation. In 1962, 17 years after first meeting, he collaborated with Stanley Kubrick for the film Lolita. As a set photographer, he would immortalize all the perversion of Lolita by only taking shots of actress Sue Lyon, the reflection of her eyes, barely showing beneath red heart-shaped sunglasses, visible in a rearview mirror. A skilled photographer and unrivaled portraitist, he only gave a select few directions; he knew how to seize the moment. Fashion would give him everything he needed to elaborate his art. The glamour of one came together with the romanticism of the other, making for a minimalist dreamlike state where he staged the icons he came across. His fashion or publicity shots deafly recount the Golden Age of the press. Hired by Vogue, he would start out by following Liz Taylor and Richard Burton during the filming of Cleopatra. Audrey Hepburn would soon follow.
In 1962, Vogue gave him the task of photographing Marilyn Monroe. In a Hotel Bel-Air suite, transformed into a studio, he shut himself up for 12 hours with THE woman. The myth was born of this muse who gave herself up for the artist’s lens with a light, natural, detached, and ever so sensual attitude. Marilyn played around, got naked, rolled around in the sheets with jewels, scarves… Norma Jean blossomed into ecstatic joy. The photos, in color, vexed the magazine that immediately sent them back for black and white shots. Three days would elapse, and more than 2,751 photos would come out from what was known as The Last Sitting. These photos of Marilyn Monroe have been compiled in several works. You can even find some marks in red marker by the actress herself.
Sophia Loren sensuously playing around with blue scrolls. Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve would also have their portrait done in the same way. Twiggy’s head would get removed from her body, as if attached to the earth by the red belt that surrounded her. Indeed, the list is long. Kate Moss with a tomboy haircut, bare-chested, lasciviously nestled into fur, a diamond in her mouth. We owe that one to his genius as well.
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