Other sizes available upon request and subject to availability.

About the work:

On the set of The Misfits, Eve Arnold photographed Marilyn Monroe in the Nevada desert, legs wide, body angled toward the camera, holding herself in a pose that is both playful and deliberate.

The image is full of energy. Marilyn appears light, almost mischievous, but there is nothing accidental about the photograph. She understands exactly how her body, face and costume will read. She is performing, but she is also controlling the performance.

That is what makes Eve Arnold’s Monroe photographs so compelling. Eve never treats Marilyn’s glamour as simple surface. She sees the intelligence inside the pose, the calculation behind the charm, the discipline required to make an image appear effortless.

On The Misfits, Marilyn was under enormous pressure. The production was difficult, the desert conditions were punishing, and the film was meant to prove her seriousness as an actor. Yet here, Eve catches a flash of humour and resilience: Marilyn playing with the camera, with the role, and with the idea of “Marilyn” itself.

It is an image of performance, but not passivity. Marilyn is not merely being looked at. She is actively making herself visible — shaping the moment, meeting the camera and turning the desert into a stage.

Eve’s gift was to recognise that complexity without flattening it. She shows Marilyn as luminous and playful, but also self-aware, disciplined and in command of the image she gives to the world.

About the series:

In 1960, Marilyn Monroe arrived in the scorching heat of the Nevada desert to film “The Misfits”, a film written by her then-husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, as a farewell letter to Monroe. Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, two established superstars, were cast to play the leading roles alongside Monroe under the direction of the seasoned director John Huston. At the time, it was set to become the most expensive black-and-white film ever made and would also be the last film in which Monroe appeared.

The production was plagued with difficulties. Huston was often drunk and regularly fell asleep on the set. Monroe’s marriage to Miller was falling apart, causing her to show up to work late, forgetful and sleep deprived. The actress confided in Eve Arnold, who was on set to take photographs and had built up a strong friendship with Monroe over their years of work.

“My most poignant memory of Marilyn is of how distressed, troubled and still radiant she looked when I arrived in Nevada,” Arnold remembered. ‘She looked into my eyes for a long moment to make sure she could still trust me. Then she drew her breath, sighed and said, ‘I’m thirty-four years old. I’ve been dancing for six months (on Let’s Make Love).

Less than a year later, Monroe would die of a drug overdose. Arnold’s images from the set of reveal the conflicted consciousness that first hid and then was trapped behind the mask of fame, showing Marilyn as by turns ordinary, anxious, hardworking, beautiful, and exhausted.