Douglas KIRKLAND Discusses Marilyn Monroe and His New Exhibit

The longtime Playboy photographer takes us behind the scenes of some of his most exciting photoshoots with iconic pop culture figures and his new exhibit, Beyond the Lens

- LIZ SUMAN

On a rainy November night in 1961, a young and green Canadian photographer named Douglas Kirkland found himself in a Hollywood studio with nothing but his camera, a bottle of Dom and the most famous woman in the world. The shoot, which one of Kirkland's earliest assignments, resulted in some of the most arresting images ever taken of Marilyn Monroe, who posed for Kirkland the year before she died.

The photos, which feature a giddy, sun-kissed Marilyn wrapped in a white silk sheet, have endured ever since, most recently in Kirkland's new exhibit Beyond the Lens, opening tonight in Los Angeles.

The show is a tour de force retrospective of Kirkland's 50-year-career, which, in addition to photographing timeless icons, from Brigitte Bardot, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren, to Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Jackson and Andy Warhol, has included nearly a dozen film and fashion editorial assignments for PLAYBOY. Kirkland's relationship with the magazine began with a 1965 fire-and-ice-themed pictorial of French ingénue Jeanne Moreau, "the brooding, beguiling high priestess of French cinem-actresses," as the magazine described the star. Then, in 1975, Kirkland shot Margot Kidder, three years before the actress-writer-director catapulted to stardom for her depiction of Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve's Superman. After the shoot, Kidder described the photos, which were taken on a beach near her Malibu home, as "the prettiest ever taken of me."

Kirkland sat down with PLAYBOY in anticipation of his new show, which features photographs of Audrey Hepburn, Jack Nicholson, Sidney Poitier, Meryl Streep, Cher, Leonard DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and countless others, to talk about photographing iconic women, working for PLAYBOY at the height of the sexual revolution, and what really went down in that room with Marilyn.