In posting these photos, I’m startled by a little revelation:
My grandfather gave me my first camera with what was (probably) an inside joke to: “take photos of pretty ladies”. But I was 15 and I thought he meant my siblings or Grandmother. After he passed amongst the possessions he left and have found their way down to me was a really remarkable hardcover magazine called Eros.
Published at the top of 1962, their third issue (autumn of ’62) have on the cover some shockingly personal photos of Marilyn Monroe. Shot on June 21, 1962 (basically a year prior) these were the last studio portraits of Monroe before her tragic death six weeks later.
These photos (her with the scarf, playful) were shot in the downtime between the “Real” shoot. They’re candid, naked, voluptuous and incredibly personal. Im sure it didn’t register upon me at the time but in retrospect seeing this book and these images: sen/sexuality in authenticity and intimacy, erotic but playful and full of romance-probably set the tone for what I wanted to discover, experience and document in my own life.
Marilyn Monroe, it seems to me, never left us. When I look at her work and her images I can’t imagine a world in which she never happened nor the iconography of every major female sex symbol to follow in some way.
Here is Sovvy channeling a couple hours of wonderful Norma Jean. Link to the set. We thought that, in the spirit of true artist/muse collaboration, like Marilyn X’ed out the photos she didn’t like (you can see those markings in a few of the photos) we’d have Sov strike out her own.
Enjoy!
And thanks, Grandpa.
Joshua Darling