Eve Arnold’s Marilyn Monroe exhibition, Castle Galleries, Castlegate, York, August 28 to 11 September (From York Press)

Eve Arnold’s Marilyn Monroe exhibition, Castle Galleries, Castlegate, York, August 28 to 11 September

11:20am Friday 27th August 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

EVE Arnold’s exhibition of previously unpublished limited-edition Marilyn Monroe prints opens tomorrow at Castle Galleries, Castlegate, York.

The pioneering photo-journalist has filmed presidents, prime ministers, movie stars, The Queen and Malcolm X… and then there was Marilyn.

“I found myself in the privileged position of photographing someone who I had first thought had a gift for a camera, but who turned out had a genius for it,” she once said.

In 1952, a photo-shoot for Esquire magazine brought them together for the first time when both were relatively unknown. “She was going places but she hadn’t arrived,” Eve recalls. “It became a bond between us… Marilyn was very important in my career. I think I was helpful in hers too.”

Marilyn and Eve Arnold forged a friendship, one that would lead to Eve becoming the only woman to shoot Marilyn extensively.

And whereas many photographers focused on portraying Marilyn’s sexuality, Eve captured some of the most tender images of the Hollywood actress on the rise from starlet to icon.

“By seeing her through photographs – the only way most people ever saw her – it may be possible to get some idea of how she saw herself and perhaps to glean some insight into the phenomenon that was Marilyn Monroe,” said Eve.

Her new photographic art collection, published by Washington Green Fine Art Publishing, is entitled simply Marilyn and features eight limited-edition giclée prints of photographs taken by Eve when Marilyn was at the peak of her fame.

During their ten-year collaboration, Eve photographed Marilyn on six different occasions, including a two-month session while Monroe was shooting The Misfits, her last completed film, in 1960. Six of the exhibition’s images, featuring Marilyn in unguarded moments, are taken from that session.

“She trusted me. The bond between us was photography,” said Eve. “She liked my pictures and was canny enough to realise that they were a fresh approach for presenting her – a looser, more intimate look than the posed studio portraits she was used to in Hollywood.”

Her Monroe portfolio is perhaps the best-known work by a photographer who was the first female to join Magnum Photos, the international co-operative of photographers, in 1954. She left America for England in 1962 and has lived here ever since, when not travelling for work.

Her numerous awards and honours include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers and an honorary OBE and she has been made a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.

In April this year, Eve was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Sony World Photography Awards, one day after her 98th birthday.

Her Marilyn exhibition will run for a fortnight; prints are for sale at £350 upwards, along with Eve’s 160-page art book of Marilyn images. Opening hours are 9.30am to 5.30pm, Tuesday to Saturday; 11am to 5pm, Sundays.