Bert Stern’s Marilyn at HGU New York

A collection of Bert Stern’s photographs from his 1962 Vogue session with Marilyn is on display until April 13 in Marilyn Monroe: The Red Party, a pop-up exhibition at the HGU New York Hotel’s Gallery 151 Annex on East 52nd Street. with a Monroe-themed menu also available in its Lumaca restaurant, the Evening Standard reports.

“‘I was preparing for Marilyn’s arrival like a lover, and yet I was here to take photographs,’ Stern said … ‘Not to take her in my arms, but to turn her into… an image for the printed page.’

The shots were chosen by Vogue‘s art director and had been sent to print when the news of Monroe’s death came out.
It was too late to stop publication and the issue ended up becoming a final tribute to the late actress.

The editors decided to use the photographs that had been selected and added a note in the opening copy that read: ‘The word of Marilyn Monroe’s death came just as this issue of Vogue went on the press. After the first shock of tragedy, we debated whether it was technically possible to remove the pages from the printing forms. And then while we waited for an answer from our printers, we decided to publish the photographs in any case.’

‘For these were perhaps the only pictures of a new Marilyn Monroe – a Marilyn who showed outwardly the elegance and taste which we learned that she had instinctively; an indication of her lovely maturity, an emerging from the hoyden’s shell into a profoundly beautiful, profoundly moving young woman.'”