Bert Stern
Original Madman

A film by Shannah Laumeister | 2011

United States
en
en
87'

Bert Stern I Original Madman

Trailer

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Synopsis

Bert Stern: Original Madman traces the career of Bert Stern, a major figure in postwar American photography whose work left a lasting mark on advertising, fashion and celebrity portraiture. From the 1950s onward, he developed a direct, sophisticated and instantly recognisable visual language that helped redefine the aesthetics of magazines and American popular culture.

Through his advertising campaigns, editorial work and now-iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn, the film shows how Stern helped shape a postwar American imaginary in which the male gaze, the staging of women and the power of photography all played a part in the making of icons and collective fantasies.

But the documentary is also interested in the man behind the images: a charismatic, ambitious and excessive photographer, full of contradictions. Through archives, photographs and testimonies, it follows a life in which creativity, celebrity and personal experience were constantly intertwined.

What you will find in this film

Bert Stern’s journey from advertising to fashion photography • How he helped shape some of the defining images of American visual culture • His work with Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn • The tension between commission, seduction and photographic invention • The portrait of a photographer who became a figure of his own era

Keywords

Fashion Photography The Artist at Work Masters of Photography Portrait & Aesthetics

Somehow there was another force guiding everything. It’s a magical force, a physical force that exists in all of us, ’cause we are our pictures. We are a visual experience.

Bert Stern Photographer

The one thing you want as an artist is to have the courage and risk your instinct, and not be controlled by structure of any kind.

Bert Stern Photographer

Pictures are like drugs. So I’m a prisoner of all the things I’ve done.

Bert Stern Photographer

I fell in love with everything I photographed. I had to photograph my desires, my loves.

Bert Stern Photographer

Women and photography were the two things I loved most in the world. When I became a Vogue photographer, I got my chance to combine them.

Bert Stern Photographer

I always thought the picture I took was between me and the subject. Not the subject and not me. But the space between us.

Bert Stern Photographer

Dive Behind the Scenes of Photography!

Remember the first time you held a camera, that thrill of capturing a one-of-a-kind moment... Relive that magic, dive into the wonders of photography, uncover its secrets, and fuel your inspiration with an exceptional collection of documentary films and original creations, complemented by exclusive articles, interviews, and a wealth of resources that invite you to observe the world from a fresh perspective.

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Fuel Your Photographic Journey

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The authors/artists

Bert Stern

Shannah Laumeister

Shannah Laumeister

Further exploration

Robert A. Sobieszek – Bert Stern: Adventures, Bulfinch Press / Little, Brown, 1997. (English) – The most useful overview of Stern's career, spanning advertising, fashion, celebrity portraiture and personal work.

Bert Stern & Annie Gottlieb – The Last Sitting, William Morrow, 1982. (English) – Stern's original book on his celebrated 1962 sessions with Marilyn Monroe, combining photographs, contact sheets and recollections.

Bert Stern & Annie Gottlieb – Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting, Schirmer Art Books, 1992. (English) – The most extensive published record of the sessions and an important document on celebrity portraiture, editing and image-making.

Nancy Hall-Duncan – The History of Fashion Photography, Alpine Book Company, 1979. (English) – A foundational survey for placing Stern within the development of twentieth-century fashion photography.

Eugénie Shinkle – Fashion Photography: The Story in 180 Pictures, Aperture, 2017. (English) – A concise contemporary history of fashion photography, particularly useful for thinking about the relationship between commerce, style and photographic authorship.

British Vogue – “The Story Behind Marilyn Monroe’s Unbearably Poignant Final Portraits"

Victoria and Albert Museum – “100 Years of Fashion Photography"

Aperture – “Inside Fashion Photography: The Story in 180 Pictures”

The Bert Stern Trust – “Marilyn Monroe, The Last Sitting

Museum of Modern Art – “Richard Avedon: Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York, May 6, 1957

@shannahstern