At this time, she was a starlet and still relatively unknown,” Eve continued. “She had just appeared in a small part in ‘The Asphalt Jungle’.” That movie, directed by Huston, was released in 1950. (It may well be the case that Eve first met Marilyn shortly after, as they were introduced to each other by photographer Sam Shaw, Marilyn’s friend since 1951. However, the Dietrich story was published in 1952, by which time Marilyn was becoming a household name.) From there came the poster plan, which he hopes will help preserve her legacy and introduce his grandmother’s work to new generations. “The themes she photographed are ever-present, if not more so – racism, sexism, inequality … not to mention the humanity she brought to her work.” As production came to an end and the crew returned to Los Angeles, Marilyn suggested a publicity photo session to a hesitant Eve. She admitted, “I dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre, but Marilyn loved posing.”

At the height of the Cold War, Eve made two long trips to the USSR in 1965 and ’66, and her wealth of pictures spanned thirty features. Then in 1969-70, she made a documentary, ‘Behind the Veil’, exploring the daily lives of women in the Middle East. As a photographer, Eve Arnold was known for getting beneath the surface of her subjects, for capturing something of the real person hidden behind the persona. By then Eve was established as a key member of the magazine team alongside Snowdon and Don McCullin,” recalled her art director, Michael Rand. “Immensely versatile, her input was a surprising mix of grit and glamour and that was her strength.” In July 1961, Marilyn was admitted to New York’s Polyclinic Hospital for gallbladder surgery. It would take her many months to recuperate from this serious operation. Nonetheless, as she left the hospital in a wheelchair, Marilyn was mobbed by the paparazzi.

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Keepsakes: The Photography of Eve Arnold in Retrospect, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas Arnold was one of the first women to be associated with Magnum, and became a full member in 1957. In 1974 she published her monograph The Unretouched Woman – a book documenting the experience of being a woman, through a woman’s perspective. In the mid-1970s, Eve befriended the teenage Beeban Kidron, who became her assistant for a time. “Before she went on trips Eve would fill notebook after notebook with research and thoughts about the place she was going,” Kidron (now an acclaimed film director) told Brigitte Lardinois in 2009. “Her return would be a whirlwind of developing, sorting and printing – never jet-lagged, she would often work into the night.”

Arnold’s output is still largely an untapped mine, given she took around 250,000 photographs in her career. Only around 2,000-3,000 have been digitised. Gerhard Bissell, Arnold, Eve, Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon ( Artists of the World), Suppl. I, Saur, Munich 2005, from pg. 458 (in German). Unlike other photographers (especially male ones), Arnold prioritised a compassionate approach, reflecting the real intimacy between the two women. As a female photographer in a male-dominated field, Eve knew how to play a role to thrive and gain access to certain people and places (perhaps even taking inspiration from Monroe). “She could be formidable and fierce and knew how to get what she wanted, but she could also be gentle and unassuming,” Michael says. She lived by her philosophy, that “if you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret.” However, Eve failed to win over at least one tough-minded critic. When her photos of the first five minutes of a baby’s life were published in ‘Life’ magazine in 1954, Eve’s mother, Bessie, asked, “What’s to admire?”Arnold died in London on January 4, 2012, aged 99, three months shy of her centenary. [13] Selected works [ edit ] Photographs [ edit ] Tim Troy "Arnold, Eve" in Robin Lenman (ed.) The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pg. 47 It was almost 5 pm – ‘the magic hour’, when the day is at its most golden. They drove on to deserted marshland. “The timing for the marshes was just right,” Eve noted, “the light soft and shadowless and ranging from pale yellow through deep saffron.” Arnold was born in Philadelphia, the middle of nine children of William Cohen (born Velvel Sklarski), a rabbi, and his wife, Bessie (Bosya Laschiner). Her mother had initial doubts about her daughter's choice of career. "I remember how she struggled all her life, raising all these children, and how her English always remained quirky. Eventually she accepted what I did, but grudgingly. When I did the Life magazine story on the first five minutes of a baby's life, she said: 'What's to be proud of?'" However, because of films like The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, she had already established a lasting reputation as a film star with great sex appeal.

As the Sixties began, Eve photographed the new First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, reading to her young daughter. She travelled to Virginia to document the emerging Civil Rights movement. Eve Arnold began photographing Marilyn Monroe after the actress saw her pictures of Marlene Dietrich in Esquire. They met at a party and Monroe asked: “If you could do that well with Marlene, can you imagine what you can do with me?” So began their professional relationship, which, over the years, turned into friendship. Arnold photographed Monroe six times over the decade she knew her; the longest of these sessions being a two-month stint during the filming of The Misfits. She liked my pictures and was canny enough to realise that they were a fresh approach for presenting her; a looser, more intimate look than the posed studio portraits she was used to in Hollywood."

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Arnold received many other honours and awards. In 1995 she was made fellow of Britain's Royal Photographic Society and elected Master Photographer by the International Center of Photography, New York. The following year she received the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for In Retrospect; in 1997 she was granted honorary degrees by three universities; in 2003 she received the distinction of an honorary OBE; and in 2010 the Sony World Photography Awards paid tribute to her leading role in the photographic community with a Lifetime Achievement Award.