George Barris: The Last Photos
George Barris (1922–2016) was one of roughly two dozen photographers who documented the image Marilyn Monroe built for herself, and one of a far smaller number she chose to work with directly. He met her in 1954 on the set of The Seven Year Itch, and what started as an assignment became an eight-year friendship.
In the summer of 1962 she asked him to make the photographs for a book she wanted to write about herself, in her own words, while the studios were busy writing her off. They worked through June and July on the beach at Santa Monica and at a house up in the Hollywood Hills. She died that August. The photographs became the Last Photos, and they are the only pictures of Marilyn Monroe she ever commissioned herself.
Gloria Steinem finished the book in 1986. Barris told his side of it in 1995. The prints that survive carry his signature and the imprint of Edward Weston, the fine art publisher who assembled one of the largest collections of Marilyn Monroe photography in the world — Milton Greene, Bert Stern, and Barris among them. These are the last signed Barris prints from Weston’s archive.
About The Last Photos Series →
The Last Photos: prints for sale →
Seventeen Years: The Photographers Who Shot Marilyn →