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Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting

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Lauded professionally, and in his private life married to a beautiful dancer, Allegra Kent, with whom he had three children, Bert Stern seemingly had it all.

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"

Other starlets like Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor had the pleasure of gracing his lens as well. The question is, why Marilyn? Bert Stern‘s pictures of Marilyn Monroe, now known as “The Last Sitting”, are some of the most memorable images depicting the actress. Marilyn had become a Hollywood sex symbol by this time, known for playing the “blonde bombshell." She was the object of every man's desire.

I liked advertising. There was an opportunity to try different ideas. And we tried to shoot pictures that had never been seen before in ads.” By the time of the shoot, Bert Stern had already developed a name for himself as a fashion and advertisement superstar photographer. Born to a “medium-poor Brooklyn family”, he worked as a Vogue photographer, and stood out through an inventive and audacious approach towards his work; For a Smirnoff Vodka ad campaign, he traveled to Egypt and shot what would become a highly successful commercial image of the ‘The Driest of the Dry’ Martini. Stern was also known for photographing some of the most famous people in history, and did fashion shoots for major magazines like Vogue and Glamour. Among his subjects have been Elizabeth Taylor, Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Twiggy, Drew Barrymore, Madonna, and Lindsey Lohan – with whom he re-created the photos of Marilyn Monroe for which he is most famous. A year later a friend introduced Stern to Shannah Laumeister, a 13-year-old girl he photographed, after which he simply filed away the photos. Four years later, they reconnected for a second shoot. Over the past three decades the two have built a close bond. “Our whole relationship has been sourced through a camera … and has grown closer and closer [until we know] each other’s souls,” Laumeister told TIME.Born in New York City in 1929, Bert Stern was a self-taught photographer who rose to the top if the industry as both a fashion and advertising photographer. He started out taking photos of his mother and sister with a second-hand camera, and a passion was born. 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. In the early 1960s, Bert Stern was one of the most successful, creative and highly paid photographers of the day. His meteoric rise had seen him produce some of the most original and remarkable images at the inception of advertising’s Golden Age, a seminal documentary film, Jazz on a Summer’s Day, and iconic portraits of some of the world’s most famous stars — including the celebrated “Last Sitting” photographs of Marilyn Monroe. 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. On the theatrical release of a remarkably candid and revealing feature-length documentary on his life, Bert Stern: Original Mad Man, TIME sat down with Stern at his New York apartment to talk about his passions (women and photography), advertising, inspiration and Marilyn.

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