Monroe Reconsidered

Eve Arnold’s photographs are part of the worldwide celebration of Marilyn Monroe’s centenary.

This year, Eve’s Monroe photographs are being seen in exhibitions and galleries across London, Los Angeles, Paris and Santa Monica, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Cinémathèque française and Peter Fetterman Gallery.

Together, these exhibitions are helping reframe Monroe’s legacy. They move beyond the familiar image of an icon and invite a more complex understanding: intelligence, discipline, vulnerability, self-awareness and agency.

Marilyn’s public image was first shaped by the Hollywood studio system, but she worked hard to move beyond it: studying acting, reading widely, forming her own production company and fighting to be taken seriously as an artist. Eve’s photographs are central to that reappraisal. Through her lens, Monroe is not reduced to an image. She is seen as a woman with curiosity, humour, ambition and interior life.