The Guardian

Up, close and personal, the camera could detect what the film studios would never have allowed an audience to see — that Marilyn Monroe, though never less than beautiful ... had spots. An exhibition in London of portraits by the photographer Eve Arnold — 95 and still working — includes many previously unseen images revealing the flaws behind the dazzling image: strap marks in one of the famous series of Monroe naked in bed, a tiny sag of flesh in a bikini shot, a scowl of concentration as she struggled to learn her lines. The two met at a party in the 1950s, soon after Arnold had photographed a recording session of Marlene Dietrich singing Lili Marlene. The images were published, without the retouching then considered mandatory for stars, in Esquire magazine.

Arnold recalls, in her introduction to the book accompanying the exhibition: ``Marilyn asked, with that mixture of naivety and self promotion that was uniquely hers: `If you could do that well with Marlene, can you imagine what you can do with me?’’’ The photographer believes Monroe was clever enough to realise that the trademark Arnold style, an apparently artless naturalness, would make her imore memorable than the ranks of near identical, heavily made up, glossy studio portraits of Hollywood starlets. “For me she was a joy to photograph: as her fame increased she became a source of many magazine pages, and having access to her earned me a certain cachet in editors’ eyes,” said Arnold.

Arnold photographed her six times over 10 years on the set of her last completed film, ‘The Misfits’. When Monroe died in 1962, Arnold was left with thousands of snaps and embargoed all but the handful already released. “Because of the unique but complicated relationship that sometimes exists between photographer and subject, she stayed on the screen of my mind... 25 years after her death, I am still haunted by her as she appeared before my lens,’’ said Arnold.