Bert Stern

Biography Stern was the son of Jewish immigrants and grew up in Brooklyn. His father worked as a children’s portrait photographer. After dropping out of high school at the age of 16, he gained a job in the mail room at Look magazine. He became art director at Flair magazine, where he learned how to develop film and make contact sheets and began taking his own pictures. In 1951, Stern was drafted into the United States Army, sent to Japan, and assigned to the photographic department. He rose to prominence in the 1950s as a commercial and fashion photographer, known for innovative advertising work (including a celebrated Smirnoff campaign) and portraits of celebrities. In June and July 1962 he photographed Marilyn Monroe for Vogue in sessions that became known as The Last Sitting. Monroe died in August 1962; the 2,571 photographs from those sessions were later published (including in The Complete Last Sitting, 1992 / expanded editions). In the 1960s his heavy use of amphetamines contributed to the end of his marriage to ballerina Allegra Kent. In the 1970s Stern moved to Spain to recover from drug addiction. By the late 1970s he returned to the United States and resumed portrait and fashion photography. In 1979 he published The Pill Book (with journalist Lawrence Chilnick), an A-to-Z guide to commonly prescribed drugs that sold millions of copies and featured color photographs of the pills by Stern. Stern continued working in later decades. He was the subject of the 2011 documentary Bert Stern: Original Madman, directed by filmmaker and actress Shannah Laumeister. Personal life Stern’s first marriage was to model Teddy Ayer (also referred to in some sources as Eleanor Fay Mostel / Teddy Air). He married New York City Ballet principal dancer Allegra Kent in 1959. They had three children—daughters Trista and Susannah and son Bret—and divorced in 1975. In 2009 Stern married Shannah Laumeister (later Shannah Laumeister Stern), an actress, screenwriter, and film director who had long been associated with him as a muse and model (he first photographed her in the early 1980s). The marriage was kept private. Laumeister directed the documentary Bert Stern: Original Madman (2011). Stern died at his home in New York City on June 26, 2013, at age 83; his death was confirmed by his wife Shannah Laumeister Stern. He was also survived by his three children from his marriage to Allegra Kent, a sister, and grandchildren. Filmography

Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959) – concert film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, directed by Bert Stern and Aram Avakian.