The first I had heard of Bert Stern was through the iconic "The Last Sitting", a collection of photographs of Marilyn Monroe in the lead up to her untimely death. My mum, a big fan of Marilyn has the book displayed with her other Marilyn books on our cabinet, and I distinctly remember feeling very drawn to these images. Marilyn, who was viewed as a vivacious and beautiful women, was now shown to be self-conscious and unhappy with her image. The red marks drawn all over the images -which were unusable at the time and undoubtedly Bert Stern was incredibly cross with this act - represented how Marilyn and all women under the eye of the media feel a pressure to be perfect.
The publication of these images isn't a big "fuck you" to Marilyn, it's a homage to a woman who was beautiful and is still an icon of beauty today. It's recognising the fact that you can be beautiful and still have these horrendous issues and lack of self-confidence. It puts things into perspective for me at least as a woman who does feel a pressure to look a certain way, and not only that, there is a pressure to be a mixture of self-assured but also not conceited.
Bert Stern died June 26 2013, and I would like to thank him for these inspirational and thought-provoking images.
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