The Camera That Captured Marilyn Monroe

IN THE SUMMER of 1962, Bert Stern arrived at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles to shoot Marilyn Monroe with the last camera anyone expected — the Nikon F. At the time, Stern, 32, was at the top of his profession, a creative rebel who had redefined both the advertising and fashion worlds with his bold groundbreaking images, ushering in an era of Mad Men celebrity photographers who lived as hard and fast as the stars they shot. But for his Vogue magazine shoot with Monroe, Stern decided to try something different. Instead of a large entourage, he arrived to meet the world’s biggest star with little more than his Nikon F. Tough, portable and the most advanced camera of its day, the F would be used to capture everything from overseas battles to NASA space missions to the Super Bowl — but Stern would use it to revolutionize the world of celebrities. Waiting for Monroe to arrive at the hotel, he had no way of knowing she would die only six weeks later. All he knew was that he needed the shot — and he would use the simplest yet most revolutionary piece of camera technology to get it. “On the Nikon, you’re looking right through the lens, so the shutter goes black when the picture is taken,” he later said. “At that perfect moment, you just have to close your eyes and jump — you have to grab it.”

Over a century earlier, celebrity photography had begun with the most bulky camera imaginable — the tintype. While daguerreotype cameras had produced standalone prints since the 1830s, the tintype finally allowed photographers to create images that could be replicated, launching celebrity photography as an industry. In 1854, in his studio in Paris, the renowned photographer Nadar began using a large wooden box to capture images on glass plates that were then sold in mass, producing portraits of everyone from Oscar Wilde to Edoaurd Manet to Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress of her day. But while celebrity photography continued to progress with film and 35 mm cameras, it was not until Clark Gable kneeled alongside his beloved Irish Setter, Queen, in a photo in 1941, that stars finally began showing their true inner lives — setting the stage for the debut of the game-changing Nikon F.

In 1959, German cameras were the industry standard. But, that year, Nikon premiered its first single-lens reflex camera — the F — the groundbreaking system immediately revolutionizing the industry, allowing photographers to see exactly what would be captured on film while giving unprecedented versatility with its small size and tough metal-box build. Rugged, cutting edge and boasting a variety of lenses, the F was used to capture iconic images from international skirmishes to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marching to Montgomery in 1965 to the Apollo 15 NASA space mission in 1971. In 1968, a Nikon F even saved the life of famed photographer Don McCullin, the tough camera stopping an AK-47 bullet during a battle in Cambodia. Over the decades, the Nikon F would continue to evolve from the F2 to the current F6, but its reputation as an industry leader would remain. Now, the Nikon D5, the digital flagship of the company, is even used on the International Space Station — with only minor modifications. “D5 models [in space] will be the same models available to consumers,” Nikon stated about the partnership with NASA in 2017, “confirming… their ability to withstand even the harshest environments.”

While Nikon continues to send cameras to the far corners of the galaxy, expanding the possibilities of photography, it remains Stern who first popularized them in another field — celebrities. In 1962, he had been waiting for hours in the Bel-Air when the world’s most famous actress suddenly arrived. “She was alone wearing a scarf and green slacks and a sweater,” Stern later wrote. “She had no makeup on. I said, ‘You’re beautiful’ and she said, ‘What a nice thing to say.’” For the next 12 hours and over two subsequent sessions, Stern shot Monroe in a freewheeling frenzy — at one point even jumping atop furniture to capture her laughing amid an array of diamonds — the resulting 2,500 photos becoming the most iconic celebrity images in history. In later years, the F would go on to become synonymous with stars from Clint Eastwood to Frank Sinatra to the Beatles to Lady GaGa, For Stern, however, only one shoot would remain his favorite — the least likely of cameras have caught the world’s greatest celebrity at her truest moment. “There have been many beautiful women since Marilyn Monroe,” he later said. “But who is there that has her total magic? Nobody has that vulnerability anymore.”