In 1938 the editor of Esquire, Arnold Gingrich offered him work in New York City, and helped fund De Dienes' passage to the United States. Once in the United States De Dienes worked for Vogue and Life magazines as well as Esquire. Dissatisfied with his life as a fashion photographer in New York, Andre moved to California in 1944, where he began to specialize in nudes and landscapes.
In 1945 De Dienes met the nineteen-year-old Marilyn Monroe, then called Norma Jean Baker, who was a model on the books of Emmeline Snively’s Blue Book Model Agency. He began photographing her and they continued the photographer/model relationship for until her untimely death in 1962. His photographs of Monroe are widely considered to be some of the best images ever made of the iconic star.
In addition to Monroe, De Dienes had another muse in the well known pin-up model Shirley Levitt who became De Dienes second wife. They were married until the end of his life. After meeting her at a party in Greenwich Village the two embarked on a lengthy photo-shoot trip down the west coast of Florida producing what legendary photographer of the nude Peter Basch called "the finest outdoor nudes ever made alongside the Betty Page photographs shot by Bunny Yeager in the Florida Keys".
As well as Monroe and Levitt, De Dienes also photographed such notable actors and actresses as Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Ingrid Bergman, Ronald Reagan, Jane Russell, Anita Ekberg and Fred Astaire. De Dienes married twice, and died of cancer on April 11, 1985, in Hollywood, California.
In recent years, Andre De Dienes photography has received overdue critical attention from a variety of sources. In 2002, Taschen published a massive 848-page two-volume monograph on his work with Marilyn Monroe. A new exhibition, entitled "André de Dienes: Marilyn and California Girls," opened June 9, 2016 at the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York City, representing the first solo show of photographer Andre de Dienes in New York in over ten years. Today his fine art nudes are considered to be amongst the finest produced in the 20th century and his acclaim has spread internationally with collectors seeking his work worldwide.
