Born in Brooklyn in 1929, Bert Stern became one of the legendary figures in contemporary photography. His father was a children's portrait photographer, which gave him his first taste of the art. After dropping out of high school his senior year, he served in the Army, working as a photographer in Japan.
Stern's first job in the advertising world was in the mailroom at Look Magazine, where he was mentored by art director Hershel Bramson. In 1955, Bramson gave him his first assignment for Smirnoff Vodka and Stern's simple and iconic work for that campaign was considered ground-breaking and truly launched his career.
He became the American prototype of the fashion photographer as media star, and his pictures have become icons to a new generation of photographers. In the 1960s, he operated a studio from which he created countless award-winning ads, editorial features, magazine covers, films, and portraits. His name is firmly associated with the golden age of advertising, and many of his images are classics.
Signature to Stern's works is a remarkable graphic simplicity that can be seen throughout all of his photographic art, as well as his extraordinary rapport with his subjects.
Besides working for clients such as IBM, Vogue, Glamour, Life, Revlon, and Smirnoff, he was highly acclaimed for his portraits of celebrities including Gary Cooper and Louis Armstrong. His portraits of stars ranging from Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn, to Drew Barrymore and Iman, form a gallery of the most beautiful women of our time.
And yet, Stern's best known work is the "Last Sitting," a collection of 2,500 photographs of Marilyn Monroe taken over three days in June 1962, six weeks before her death, in the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles for Vogue.
After he retired from the advertising world, he shifted his focus to fine art, and his photographs have since been exhibited at and/or are included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in Texas; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada; The J. Paul Getty Museum in California; the Musée Maillol in France; the Hermitage Museum in Russia, and many more.
Stern published a book of his photographs, many of which were previously unseen, titled Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting in 1992, adding commentary that provided a more personal view of Monroe. He also caused a stir when he recreated this photo shoot in 2008 with actress Lindsay Lohan for New York magazine.
In 1999, his 1959 documentary film “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, was selected for the National Film Registry in recognition of its historical significance.
In February 2009, several photographs from Stern's archive were featured in our exhibition: Marilyn Monroe & James Dean “Forever Young”.