Books are much more than inspiration for me. They are part of the basis for how I think about photography. They show me how to work with people, how to capture atmospheres, how to tell stories. I simply have to have it in this form in front of me, be able to leaf through it and look at it for a long time. I mention it regularly in my lectures. And in my workshops, I always carry a large stack with me - I put them in the hands of the participants so that they can see what I'm talking about when I talk about (my) photography. Every time, I notice how strong the reactions are. It also tells me something when someone can't get anything out of it.

Some illustrated books have opened a few windows for me, shown me new paths or encouraged me to think differently. Others have simply confirmed my ideas. I'm not a collector in the traditional sense, but there is a large shelf here full of books. And there are piles of them scattered around our apartment. Some of them are worth quite a lot. They range from works by world-famous photographers to small editions by artists who are better known regionally or nationally in amateur photography circles. From Lindbergh and Avedon to Purienne or Kate Bellm to a self-produced Polaroid collection from a photographer around the corner. I collect because I just like looking at them.

That's why I also want to write about such volumes here on the blog. Not classic reviews - others can do that better. Rather impressions and thoughts that arise while leafing through them and that flow into my photographic work. Just like with The Last Sitting by Bert Stern. Ready?

What it's all about

The Last Sitting is no ordinary photo book. It brings together the last photographs of Marilyn Monroe - taken by Bert Stern in June 1962. A few days at the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles, over 2,700 negatives, from which Vogue printed just twenty pictures in the end. The first and only time during this icon's lifetime. The issue was published in the same week that the news of Marilyn's death went around the world.

Bert Stern - from messenger boy to the "Original Mad Man" of photography

Stern was born in Brooklyn in 1929, the son of Jewish immigrants, and never had any classical photographic training. He started out as a messenger boy at Look Magazine, later became an art director at an advertising agency and taught himself photography.

During his time in the army in Japan in the early 1950s, he took his first pictures and learned about technology there, such as lighting. His breakthrough came in 1953: the famous Smirnoff advertisement, a bottle in front of the pyramids of Giza. Claim: "Smirnoff leaves you breathless." This was not simply advertising, but an image that, in combination with the slogan, conveyed a new kind of mood. It was also remarkable because Russian vodka was a risk during the Cold War. The success was huge, sales exploded and Stern became one of the most sought-after photographers of his generation overnight - an "Original Mad Man".

From the mid-1950s, he worked regularly for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. His style was elegant, but never rigid. Perhaps because he was self-taught, his pictures were imbued with their own psychology. He thought in movements and looked for the still image in them. This gave his pictures a certain something.

He saw Marilyn Monroe for the first time in 1955 - at a party at the Actors Studio. He was still at the beginning, one of many astonished people. "Like a moth seeking the light of a candle," he later wrote. She was the goddess, he was the beginner. David and Goliath.

Marilyn Monroe - Myth

Marilyn Monroe - we all know the name, but many of today's younger generation only have a vague idea of who she really was. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926, without a father and with a mentally ill mother, she grew up in foster families and homes.

She began working as a factory worker, was discovered by an army photographer and soon became a model. She signed her first film contract in 1946. Norma Jeane gradually became Marilyn Monroe - blonde, with a new voice and a new name. Two lives in one body.

In the 1950s, she became the biggest female star in the world. Films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire made her a sex symbol. But the hype didn't come from Hollywood alone. It was the photos of her that shaped a new image: sensual and vulnerable at the same time. Icon and girl next door at the same time.

It was precisely this contradiction that was at her core. Marilyn stood for youth, freedom and glamor - but also for loneliness, doubt and the abysses of fame. She was projection and reality in one person. She experienced a fame (and in a way) that can hardly be compared with today's standards.

My personal relationship with Marilyn

She was never a sex symbol for me. I was young at a different time for that. For me, she was - together with James Dean - a symbol of youth and style. For something mysterious, timeless. As a teenager, I found her films kitschy, light years away from my reality. It was only later that I understood what lay beneath and learned more about her.

It was Eve Arnold's pictures of her that I particularly liked - because they show Marilyn as a person, not as a myth. I think my first book was Marilyn by Magnum. And yet, there are two pictures in Last Sitting that I think are among the greatest portraits ever. One shows her sleeping, relaxed, almost defenceless (which perhaps doesn't even count as a portrait in the true sense of the word). The other: in a black, backless dress, turned sideways into the light, her hair severe and vulnerable at the same time. For me, these two pictures are among my eternal favorites.

The place of history - the Bel Air Hotel

The shoot did not take place in a studio, but in the Bel-Air Hotel. Opened in 1946, it quickly became a retreat for Hollywood stars such as Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor and Judy Garland. A place of tranquillity, hidden behind palm trees and gardens.

It was perfect for Stern: neutral, discreet, but full of history. Marilyn knew it, she retreated there when her life went off the rails - after failed marriages, in crises. The Bel-Air was famous for its discretion and professionalism in dealing with celebrities.

It still exists today. In 2021, the Last Sitting pictures were shown there again for the 75th anniversary. Anyone sitting there today - at the bar or outside in the garden with the white bungalows and red roofs - may sense something of this past. An oasis in the middle of Los Angeles in the style of Spanish-Mediterranean design.

Three and a day - The sittings

It all actually began a few weeks before the famous "Last Sitting". Stern finally dared to contact her for a shoot; he had previously been commissioned by Vogue to photograph her. Marilyn agreed and came to a first appointment alone. Without a stylist, without an escort. Just her, Stern and the camera. The shoots sometimes went well into the night and into the next morning. The set-ups were simple. Paperbacks and flashbulbs. Personally, I (and I think Stern himself) would have preferred to shoot in daylight. The two approached each other and soon got into a flow where Monroe agreed to undress. She rolled her pants halfway down and put a scarf over her upper body. This is how the first nude picture came about - raw, casual, without myth.
Stern achieved his "goal for the day". He wanted her naked and without the second skin she usually wore for Hollywood glamor. In his text, he describes how much he both adored and desired her. From today's perspective, some passages sound sexist. He was also newly married, with a wife and a baby waiting for him at home. But he was probably really interested in photographing her as Norma Jean. Difficult to reconstruct when both protagonists are no longer alive.

Stern submitted the pictures to Vogue. Marilyn was to appear there for the first time ever - one page. Maybe two. The pictures were well received. The editors felt that no one had ever photographed her so intimately and personally. But for Vogue as the fashion magazine, dresses and jewelry had to be included. This was followed shortly afterwards by a call to Stern and an assignment for several more days at the Bel-Air Hotel. Eight pages were planned, a big stretch. An accolade for Stern.

But this time everything was different: an entourage of stylists, make-up artists and editors. A huge selection of dresses. And in the middle of it all, Stern, who wanted something completely different: his picture. The one that would make her immortal. And you.

On the first day: Marilyn arrived, as usual, hours later than agreed. Champagne, Polaroids, first attempts. She laughed, played, slipped away. Stern felt his way around. Among other things, I took the black and white shots of her in the backless dress that I like so much.

On the second day. The crew left the suite and suddenly they were alone. Marilyn took off her housecoat and lay down under a sheet. Intimacy again. Stern photographed her - laughing, serious, vulnerable. The picture showing her asleep, her head in the pillow, relaxed, unprotected, also dates from this phase. Stern later wrote that they had also become physically closer. . He describes how things became so intense between them that he almost kissed her, which she refused, only to let him touch her and fall asleep. He writes that only the camera separated the two of them. Whether this is true remains to be seen. Perhaps this anecdote is also intended to underline the dramaturgy of the scene. What remains is the image of the sleeping Marilyn.

She didn't show up the next day. No call, no appointment. Stern waited. A break, as if she had rewritten the rules.

And finally the grand finale on the last day. The picture he really wanted: Marilyn lying on the bed, photographed from above. No more playing, no more posing. Just clarity and connection between Bert Stern and Marilyn Monroe. In pictures that he was to capture like a legacy. Stern had been working towards this for years.

This is how these days are framed: from the first spontaneous nude picture to the final portrait from above. In between, closeness, distance, omissions. Three days that depict a whole spectrum of feelings.

After the shoot

The shoot was over for Stern, but the real work was just beginning. Over 2,700 negatives lay before him, contact sheets full of Marilyn - laughing, serious, tired, naked, veiled. He spent days and nights sifting through, marking and discarding. Marilyn herself had crossed out some of the negatives with red nail polish or felt marker or pierced them with a hairpin and rendered them unusable, as if she wanted to make it clear once again who was in control, at least in retrospect. Remarkably, she let pictures of her scar under her ribs from gall bladder surgery go through, while she destroyed shots where her lipstick was imperfect.

Then the wait. Stern told how he waited days and weeks for the call from the Vogue editorial team. Finally the call came and the invitation to view: a strictly limited selection. In the end, Vogue printed just twenty of the thousands of shots across the eight pages. The editors opted for a clear black and white line - elegant, serious, almost austere. No colorful experiments, no nude shots. It was a very deliberate choice: Marilyn as an icon, not as a girl, not as an on-demand sex symbol.

The timing was fateful. As the issue was going to press, the news of her death arrived. What was meant to be a fashion story became an obituary. The pictures took on a gravity that Stern had never planned. They became a kind of obituary and Stern's most important work.

After the climax

The Last Sitting was Stern's high point. After that, he continued to photograph - Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn. But in the 1970s, his style no longer suited the new, tougher visual language. Then came alcohol, drugs and failed marriages.

He himself said that he never got rid of Marilyn. Those three days in Bel-Air became a fixed point. A triumph that became a burden for him. It was not until the 1990s, with retrospectives and new editions, that recognition returned. In his final years, he photographed stars such as Kylie Minogue, Kate Moss and Madonna again.

Bert Stern died on June 26, 2013 in New York City, aged 83.

What I gained for myself from this book

This book has changed my view of the portrait photography process. It showed me that patience is more important than technique. That you have to wait for someone to drop a layer. Norma Jeane and Marilyn - that was an extreme example. But it's precisely this moment that I still look for today: when a person is no longer playing, but is really there.

I recognize myself in much of what Stern describes: the path to eye level, the constant interplay between David and Goliath, the understanding of beauty as energy, not as the sum of individual characteristics. The difference between the fact of beauty and the fantasy of it. Thinking in movements, in films from which you draw still images. And the layers that you uncover layer by layer.

But I also have questions. How would she have aged and how would she have developed in the 70s/80s? How would I have photographed her? Would it even have been possible to do a multi-day session with such a superstar today? At a time when everything has to happen so quickly and so much has to be produced. What does "being naked" mean today?

Perhaps that is the real lesson of The Last Sitting: that a portrait is not a pose but a fragment - a still image of an experience with a person. Past, at the moment of the shutter release - and therefore unforgettable.

My bookshelf. Episode 1: The Last Sitting by Bert Stern