Bert Stern

Recently the Photofestival in Milan has dedicated a whole session to Bert Stern, an American fashion and celebrity portrait photographer. His best known work is arguably The Last Sitting, a collection of 2,500 photographs taken of Marilyn Monroe over a three day period, six weeks before her death. I was very impressed by them.

Bertram Stern was born in Brooklyn, New York on 3 October 1929. From early age on he got into cartoons and advertisements. After first jobs as an office hand, Stern began to work as an Art Director for the fashion magazine ‚Mayfair' in 1949. There he also began to work with photography. He was brought to success thanks to a cover photo for ‚Vogue' in November 1960, followed by many shootings with celebrities especially from the movies. In 1962 Bert Stern his best known pictures were taken: shortly before Marilyn Monroe's death, Stern received the permission to hold a three-day photo-shooting with the actress for ‚Vogue'. Today Bert Stern lives and works in New York.

Here are some of his beautiful pictures

and those from the Last Setting with Marilyn