Some quotes from Eve Arnold, on her relationship with Marilyn Monroe:
“Over the years I found myself in the privileged position of photographing someone who I had first thought had a gift for the still camera and who turned out had a genius for it. I never knew anyone who came close to Marilyn in natural ability to use both photographer and still camera.”
“She didn’t have to learn lines as she did for her movies. She could let her imagination range freely without concern for consistency or continuity, she could be a different Marilyn for each photographer or each frame of film.”
“Our ‘quid pro quo’ relationship, based on mutual advantage, developed into a friendship. The bond between us was photography. She liked my pictures and was canny enough to realize 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.”
“If it is true, as some has said of her, that all her life she pursued a search for a missing person – herself – then perhaps Marilyn, a creature of myth and illusion, found herself not in the fleeting film image, but in the photograph, which would seem to give her concrete proof of her being.”
