GEORGE BARRIS (AMERICAN 1922-2016) §
MARILYN MONROE ON SANTA MONICA BEACH - JULY 1962
£1,375
Auction: 16 April 2020 at 12:00 BST
Description
Photograph, later re-print, signed by the photographer
Dimensions
25cm x 20cm (10in x 8in)
Footnote
Biography: George Barris was an American photographer and photojournalist, best known for his portraits of Marilyn Monroe.
Born in 1922 in New York, NY, Barris had a lifelong interest in photography. He first discovered this passion on his sixth birthday, when his brother gifted him a box camera.
Barris worked as a photographer for the U.S. Army's Office of Public Relation during the early years of WWII. He covered General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s victory homecoming celebration and many of these photographs were published.
After the war, he became a freelance photographer in Hollywood, where he photographed many important celebrities of the 1950s and 1960s, including Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra, Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable and Steve McQueen.
It was during this time that he first worked with Marilyn Monroe, whom he met while photographing during the filming of The Seven Year Itch. They became close friends, frequently working together, and he was one of the last photographers to capture images of Monroe before her death in August of 1962, in a series that became known as "The Last Photos." In fact, Barris took the last ever photograph of Monroe on July 13, 1962.
Devastated by the death of his friend, Barris moved to Paris, where he lived for the next 20 years. Barris died on September 30, 2016, in Thousand Oaks, CA at the age of 94.