ORIGINAL BERT STERN (1929-2013) 3 PORTRAITS OF CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER PHOTOGRAPH
This is just a great original piece. I have had a few Bert Stern photographs in the past but all of them have been of Marilyn Monroe. His most famous muse and subject. For those not familiar with the photographer I have included his biography below. I acquired this photograph in a major collection of NYC ballet and theater photography. I have had it for a while and have been researching it. Truthfully, I have not been able to find another example of this image. With the thousands of auction records and photographs out there for Bert Stern, the fact that I cannot find another example of this photograph really stuns me. This is a great original gelatin silver printing of 3 different exposures of the same portrait photograph of the famed actor Christopher Plummer. All 3 are varying levels of light and exposure. All printed on the same photography paper measuring 8 x 10 inches. The images are in excellent condition. The sheet itself shows some minor crackling to the images and what you can see is obvious damage to the lower right corner. Fortunately that damage does not extend into the images. A proper matte cut and frame would make this an incredible display of this super rare Bert Stern photograph (I cannot even find it on the Bert Stern trust website. Verso has Bert Stern's original backstamp that he used in the 1960s. Do your own research on this incredible photograph. See if you can find another example. Truly a wonderful scarce original work and a must have for any Bert Stern or Christopher Plummer. Unframed. FREE SHIPPING ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES!
For those not familiar with the artist his biography from a gallery that specializes in his work reads: "Bert Stern was born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1947 and at the age of seventeen, Stern took a job as a messenger and clerk in the mailroom of Look Magazine. Art Director Herschel Bramson recognized his talents and encouraged him to pursue a photography career. After learning as much as he could about art history, Stern left to become the art director at Mayfairmagazine, where he started taking his first photographs. He was drafted in 1951 and talked his way into an army job as a motion picture cameraman in Japan. After being released from the army in 1953, Stern was hired to photograph the print advertisements for Smirnoff Vodka. These images were considered to be a striking breakthrough in style, as they looked more like editorial photography than advertising. Utilizing a huge and lavishly equipped studio, Stern experimented with many unconventional techniques, including videotape, screen-printing, photo-offset combinations and computerized printouts. He continued to photograph the advertising campaigns for brands such as Canon, Dupont, Pepsi-Cola, US Steel, and Volkswagen. His work appeared in VOGUE magazine and other publications throughout the 1960's and he was recognized as the prototype of the fashion photographer as media star, with his images of models and celebrities becoming icons for the next generation of fashion photographers.
Stern’s best-known body of work is a collection of over 2,500 photographs taken of Marilyn Monroe over a three-day period six weeks before her death. As they were the last posed photographs taken of Monroe, the portfolio has come to be known as "The Last Sitting". The photographs were commissioned by VOGUE magazine, and several of the images appeared in a commemorative issue following Monroe’s sudden death. A book containing these photographs, including copies of proofs over which Monroe had written comments or crossed her own image out with lipstick, was published in 1992 as Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting. In 2011, the feature-length documentary Bert Stern: Original Mad Man was released, in which Stern spoke candidly about the joys and tribulations of his career as a photographer. Bert Stern died in 2013. "