US fashion photographer Bert Stern dead at 83

NEW YORK, United States - US fashion photographer Bert Stern, famous for his photos of Marilyn Monroe taken six weeks before her death, has died in New York, his partner told AFP on Thursday. He was 83.

"Bert Stern passed yesterday, Wednesday," Shannah Laumeister said in a brief email.

During a career of more than 50 years, he photographed some of the world's most beautiful women, also including Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot.

But he was known above all for the moving pictures of a largely undressed Monroe, taken at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles in June 1962.

Over three days he took 2,571 photos, turned years later into a book, "Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting." The actress died on August 5 that year.

Stern also took publicity shots, and is considered a key figure in transforming such pictures into an art form in the 1960s. He also made the film "Jazz on a Summer's Day" in 1959.

His work has been shown in some of the world's most prestigious galleries and museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art.