“As minutes passed, I fell more and more in love with Norma Jeane; there was an immediate rapport between us.”
~ Andre de Dienes (1913 - 1985)
A selection of early photographs by André de Dienes, made during his first encounters with Norma Jeane before she became Marilyn Monroe. There’s a rare ease in these images - sunlit, unguarded, and still forming. Where the future icon feels more like a young woman simply being herself. De Dienes returns again and again to that space between innocence and becoming, where presence hasn’t yet been shaped by fame.
Looking at these, I’m always struck by how fragile that moment is - the sense that I’m witnessing someone just before the world fully arrives.