George Zimbel, Photographer of Marilyn Monroe's Iconic Skirt Shot, Dies at 93

George Zimbel, the American-Canadian photographer known for capturing Marilyn Monroe with her white dress lifted by a subway grate, died at 93 in his Montreal home. Born in 1929 in Woburn, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrant parents, he studied at the Photo League under John Ebstel, attended Columbia University, and earned a scholarship to the New School for Social Research under Alexey Brodovitch. Encouraged by Edward Steichen, then MoMA curator, he served as an army photographer in post-war Europe. His freelance work for the New York Times from the 1960s reflected the Photo League's documentary style. The iconic Monroe sequence was shot in 1954 for a Pix agency campaign promoting Billy Wilder's film "The Seven Year Itch," but Zimbel only printed and exhibited the images from 1976 onward, never selling them. He also photographed Jacqueline and John Kennedy in 1960, Queen Elizabeth II, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Later, he focused on everyday people in black-and-white, stating, "I am interested in humanity." He moved to Canada in 1980, settling in Montreal, after a decade on Prince Edward Island, having left the US in 1971 to protest the Vietnam War. The 2016 documentary "Zimbelism" covers his life. Since the 2000s, his prints entered collections including MoMA and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, with a 2015 solo show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.