A look at Marilyn Monroe, a book by Norman Mailer and Bert Stern, published by Taschen in 2012. This edition joins together her famous and controversial biography by Norman Mailer and photos from «The Last Sitting,» a legendary session that produced what are considered the most intimate snapshots ever taken of Marilyn. The book commemorates the 50th anniversary of The Last Sitting and the death of Marilyn Monroe, just six weeks after the photographs were taken by Stern for Vogue magazine.

We especially thank the El Buscón bookshop, located in Paseo Las Mercedes in Caracas, for allowing us to photograph this book.

About the authors:

Norman Mailer (Long Branch, 1923 – New York, 2007). Novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film director, actor and political activist. Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, one of them for The Executioner’s Song (1979), considered his most famous work, and the other for The Armies of the Night, that was also picked for a National Book Award. Mailer is considered, along with Truman Capote, one of the pioneers of new journalism. His biography of Marilyn Monroe was particularly controversial for assuring, in the last chapter, that she was murdered by agents of the FBI and the CIA. One of the lesser known aspects of this writer is his penchant for drawing, especially toward the end of his life.

Bert Stern (Brooklyn, 1929 – New York, 2013). Photographer specializing in fashion and celebrity portraits. He worked for magazines like Vogue, Squire, Look and Life, among others. His most famous work is The Last Sitting, a collection of 2,500 photographs of Marilyn Monroe taken for Vogue magazine that were first published as a book in 1982. Stern also did some film works for Lolita (1962), Date with an Angel (1987) and American Masters (2006). As a director, he made the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day (along with Aram Avakian) in 1960, and starred in the documentary Bert Stern: Original Mad Man in 2009.