“A picture of Norma Jean, not Marilyn.”
—Vik Muniz on this work
Among Richard Avedon’s most celebrated portraits, this tour de force was captured on 6 May 1957 at Madison Avenue studio during a publicity shoot for 30-year-old Marilyn Monroe’s new film The Prince and the Showgirl. About this day, Avedon reminisced:
‘Marilyn Monroe was an invention of hers. A genius invention that she created like an author creates a character. So when Marilyn Monroe put on a sequin dress and danced in the studio, I mean, for hours she danced, and sang, and flirted, and did this thing. There is no describing what she did. She did Marilyn Monroe. And then there was the inevitable drop because she was someone who went very high up and went way, way down. And when that night was over she sat in the corner like a child with everything gone. But I wouldn't photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw that she was not saying, “No”.’
This poignant image was first published in his 1964 book Nothing Personal with the caption Marilyn Monroe, actress as if to contradict her fame and celebrity. Here, we see a fatigued Monroe with an absent expression, her gaze downward and posture slumped. A rare glimpse of the woman behind the superstardom, Avedon reveals the vulnerable side of her inner complexity. It is this sense of contradiction and duality between public persona and private self, outer perception and inner truth that renders this prophetic shot, taken five years before her death, so hauntingly memorable within Avedon’s unparalleled oeuvre.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, each holds a print of this image.