takes pride in only kissing Marilyn after she just about managed to say "no" before she passed out on the bed after a grueling day of shooting Bert Stern‘s pictures of Marilyn Monroe, now known as “The Last Sitting”, are some of the most memorable images depicting the actress.

In 1962, when he had begun shooting personalities as well as ads, a call from Twentieth Century Fox to photograph Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra took Stern to Rome. Stern was afforded the freedom to do whatever he wanted to do. “I didn’t shoot set pictures,” he told TIME. “I tended to want to shoot portraits. Richard Burton — who I had already shot in my studio in New York — was playing Marc Anthony and they [Taylor and Burton] began an affair. I became friends with the two of them and began to hang out with them off set — I would shoot more candid, fun pictures.” In 2002 Stern snapped Sophie Dahl for Vogue in a homage to Monroe's poses with the chiffon roses. In 2008, he took the curious decision to more directly replicate the Last Sitting sessions, this time with Lindsay Lohan. The results were neither as fun nor as fragile as the originals.

Side note: Did you know we named our Marilyn accordion-pleated skirt after Marilyn to pay homage to her infamous accordion-pleated dress that she wore in The Seven Year Itch? So, who is Bert Stern and what is The Last Sitting? Stern was married twice, to ballerina Allegra Kent in 1959, later divorced, and again in 2009 to director Shannah Laumeister. He had three children with Kent, all of whom survived him. Bert Stern passed away at the age of 83 in June of 2013.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]

The year all of Bert’s dreams came true. He proposed shooting Marilyn for Vogue, and Vogue said yes.Six years ago, Laumeister turned the tables — and her camera — on Stern and began to make a documentary of his life. Kannamma came out in 2004 as transgender and soon began devoting her time to social activism, fighting for the rights of transgender people -- known in India as "hijras." But her current campaign -- which she is running on a very tight budget -- focuses on other issues too. For example, she hopes to develop the city's infrastructure and rid its systems of corruption. Based in New York, Stern continued to shoot the most famous models, musicians and actors throughout the 80s and 90s, including Madonna and Kate Moss. He repeatedly returned to the Last Sitting photographs, which have been reprinted in many books including a Taschen publication that pairs Stern's photos with Norman Mailer's controversial 1973 biography of Monroe.

The breezy spontaneity of Stern's photographs was reflected in his film Jazz on a Summer's Day, a documentary made at the 1958 Newport Jazz festival. In the opening sequence, rippling water is used as a visual parallel to the sound of Jimmy Giuffre's saxophone, Bob Brookmeyer's trombone and Jim Hall's guitar. This impressionistic approach distinguishes the documentary from conventional concert films. His marriage collapsed, as did his health and his finances. “I was broke. I shipped everything I owned into a twenty-foot container and went to Spain to stay with a friend.” His marriage was irreparably damaged, but he returned to New York and set to work, trying to rebuild his life. The photo shoot is the culmination of a fantasy and a love affair. Bert Stern had idolized Marilyn Monroe since he met her at a party for the Actor’s Studio in 1955. He now finally had the opportunity to photograph Monroe and so great was his infatuation with the actress, that he referred to setting up his photo shoot as, “preparing for Marilyn’s arrival like a lover, and yet I was here to take photographs. Not to take her into my arms, but to turn her into tones…” Through his work in advertising in the 1950s, Bert Stern is credited with having created the modern concept of advertising photography. He would be known for his work for companies such as Smirnoff, IBM, and Revlon, and eventually made a documentary that named him has the “Original Mad Man”.I bought new a car from the GI Bill of Rights and drove to the white sands desert of New Mexico to photograph Hershal’s ‘Driest of the Dry’ concept.” Stern excavated and preserved the poignant humanity of the real woman—beautiful, but also fragile, needy, flawed—from the monumental sex symbol. In our armored, airbrushed age, his achievement feels almost revolutionary. Beginning today, visitors to the Paris exhibition hall (and car dealer) DS World can experience the elegance and vulnerability of Stern’s series in the exhibition “ Marilyn, the Last Sitting,” on view until January 6, 2018. The photos are featured alongside DS car models, including a rare, bright-red DS 21 Cabriolet from 1966. Vogue had sent Marilyn the photos from the first day for approval—it was not usual practice but for Marilyn they had made an exception. “A lot of the pictures she had put markings on with magic marker, directly onto the transparency [to indicate images that didn’t reflect her own self-image]. I thought it was interesting but I didn’t think I would use them. Then the art director Herb Lubalin heard about [the crossed out frames] and said they would like to use them in a new magazine they were starting, called Eros. They talked to her PR people and they had no objections.” On the theatrical release of a remarkably candid and revealing feature-length documentary on his life, Bert Stern: Original Mad Man, TIME sat down with Stern at his New York apartment to talk about his passions (women and photography), advertising, inspiration and Marilyn.

Stern left to take a position as Art Director at Mayfair magazine, before reuniting with Bramson at the newly founded Flair magazine. The story of Marilyn continues to haunt me. I want to know why a beautiful life was cut short. I want to know what she was like while she was alive. I want to know why her presence still stands the test of time. For now, what I do have are these small snapshots of who she was, preserved and eternally youthful, uninhibited and completely raw, thanks to a young Brooklyn photographer who never could have imagined the ever-lasting allure his work would one day evoke. Then, now, and for many years to come. Bert Sternwas a New York-based photographer famous for his ‘Last Sitting’ photographs of Marilyn Monroe and his groundbreaking advertising photography. The resulting film, Bert Stern: Original Mad Man, is a candid and revealing portrait of the photographer — in Laumeister’s words, it’s “an imperfect movie … dealing with the controversial nature of who people are. We are all contradictory, and if you turn a camera on anyone’s life they’ll have plenty of reason to hide.”Stern’s trajectory was interrupted by the Korean War. In 1951 he was drafted into the U.S. Army. But Stern never made it to Korea: instead, at the recommendation of an old friend who was already stationed in Tokyo, Stern was diverted to Japan and assigned to the photo department. He learned to use a film camera and made motion pictures of news events for the army while taking stills for himself. For Stern, taking photographs was like making love — an intense, emotional experience. “I fell in love with everybody I photographed,” he says today. I was going to photograph Marilyn Monroe. All I had to do was figure out how to get what I wanted: pure Marilyn, nude. But I didn’t know how to approach her with that idea… Maybe the only way I was going to get it was through illusion: screens, veils. So, I went to Vogue and said, “Can you get me some scarves? Scarves you can see through – with geometrics. And jewelry.” Jewelry doesn’t need too many clothes, right?”