Shaw Sam - Marilyn Monroe à New-York, Amagansett, 1957

Rare and magnificent photogravure by Sam Shaw depicting the famous Marilyn Monroe posing on the beach in New York in 1957.

Rare cliché that will make cinephile collectors happy.

Description :
Photolithograph on premium thick paper.
Author(s): Sam Shaw (1912-1999)
Publication: 2001
Edition: Sam Shaw Family archives - Roger Viollet
Condition: Superb (see the numerous photos).
Slight signs of age at the very edge. Detail invisible from the frame.
Dimensions: 28 cm x 24 cm
Shipping: Professional, careful and secure packaging with tracking number and insurance via UPS or Colissimo.

Worldwide shipping.

About the photographer:

Sam Shaw (1912–1999), a lifelong New Yorker, was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Shaw is internationally recognized for his photographs of films and movie stars, although his interests and talents spanned a wide range of subjects, including music, theater, sculpture, painting, literature, journalism, and social and political activism. His prolific career, spanning six decades, is remarkable for its breadth and diversity and remains a historical record of the 20th century.

Shaw demonstrated his artistic talents from an early age. With no financial resources, he collected tar from the streets of New York City to make sculptures. Shortly after graduating from high school, he shared a studio with artist Romare Bearden. Shaw eventually turned to photography, but Bearden and Shaw continued to work together throughout their lives. Many of Shaw's film photographs, as well as portraits of jazz and blues musicians, appear in Bearden's collages and murals. They also collaborated on projects with jazz and literary critic Albert Murray.

In the 1940s, Shaw worked as a courtroom cartoonist, then as a political and sports cartoonist and art director for the Brooklyn Eagle. His photojournalism career began at Colliers magazine, which allowed him to travel the United States documenting the lives of coal miners, sharecroppers, burlesque performers, New Orleans musicians, civil rights activists, and other everyday people and situations. These poignant photographs make up Shaw's "Americana" collection, images depicting American life in the mid-20th century. Shaw was also an early contributor to the prestigious Magnum Photos photo agency.

In the early 1950s, Shaw began working in the film industry as a still photographer. He immortalized countless movie stars, including Woody Allen, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren, Charlie Chaplin, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, and many others. His photographs frequently appeared on the covers of LIFE and Look magazines, as well as Paris Match, L'Europeo, the Daily Mail, Der Stern, Harper's Bazaar, Connaissance des Arts, and others. Shaw preferred to photograph his subjects without staging, makeup, or decoration, encouraging spontaneity and improvisation. This style distinguished his work from the stereotypical Hollywood glamour shots of the time and foreshadowed his future role as an independent filmmaker.

Shaw was also recognized as a master of publicity for many of the films and stars he collaborated with. In 1951, he photographed Marlon Brando wearing a ripped T-shirt, a portrait that became iconic in A Streetcar Named Desire. A few years later, he created the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe, her white skirt billowing over a subway grate, in The Seven Year Itch. Shaw's photos in her flying skirt are among the most widely seen ever taken.

After years on film sets, Shaw began directing films himself in the 1960s. His first film, Paris Blues (1961), starred Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodward, Diahann Carroll, and Louis Armstrong. His close friend, Duke Ellington, composed the film's score. Shaw also worked closely with renowned actor-director John Cassavetes, the father of American independent cinema, as an advisor on his first film, Shadows (1959). Shaw went on to produce many of Cassavetes's films, including A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Director in 1975, and Gloria (1980), which won the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Shaw also produced Cassavetes's Husbands (1970), Opening Night (1977), and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) (he later withdrew his producer name), the latter of which he was also the production designer. These films, like Shaw's photographs, championed independence and encouraged spontaneity.

John Cassavetes aptly described his best friend Sam as a "Renaissance man." Shaw's true passion, however, remained photography. Even as a producer, Shaw remained the preferred photographer on set, while also helping to create the advertising campaigns for every film he produced.

Shaw carried at least two worn Nikons around his neck wherever he went, ready to capture anything that caught his eye, in black and white as well as color. Thus, Shaw's photographic archive contains a wide range of subjects, from crime, sports, landscape, and photojournalism photography to classic American and European cinema, independent film, and portraiture. The collection includes photographs of musicians, artists, intellectuals, and other famous figures, such as Marc Chagall, Arthur Miller, Marcel Duchamp, Igor Stravinsky, Joe DiMaggio, Irving Berlin, Tennessee Williams, Patti Smith, and Deborah Harry of the rock band Blondie.

Today, Sam Shaw's legacy and work are preserved and enhanced by his children and grandchildren in the Shaw Family Archives.