Andre de Dienes. Marilyn

In the early 1940s, a young Hungarian photographer who worked in New York moved to Los Angeles, where he met one of the most beautiful women in the world, and one of the most important in his life. At the time, her name was Norma Jeane Dougherty, a young model in search of success, who in the following years would take the world by storm as an icon of the silver screen under the much better-known name of Marilyn Monroe. André de Dienes and Marilyn had a brief romantic relationship, but above all a professional one that helped young Norma Jeane’s career take off, thanks to a series of stunning shots, including one for an advertisement for Pirelli Lastex swimwear. The book edited by Steve Crist and Shirley T. Ellis de Dienes is not so much a biography or catalogue as a two-volume photographic diary: Marilyn: Photographs and Marilyn: Memoirs, with a wealth of handwritten personal notes and de Dienes’s memories, which paint a portrait of the ambitious young model and her transformation into the queen of Hollywood. Andre de Dienes. Marilyn  Edited by Steve Crist and Shirley T. Ellis de Dienes Taschen, 2002