Famed Photographer Milton Greene’s negatives of Marilyn Monroe being auctioned with copyright

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Fashion and celebrity photographer Milton H. Greene was only 26 years old when he photographed Marilyn Monroe for Look magazine. He went on to take thousands of photos of the Hollywood siren.

Now, 3,700 unpublished black-and-white and colour negatives and transparencies of Greene’s Monroe archive are going on the auction block. They’re part of 75,000 celebrity negatives and slides Greene shot in the 1950s and 1960s.

They’re all being offered with copyright, meaning a potential buyer can print images from the negatives and transparencies, sell them and license the material. Art experts are calling that unprecedented.

The material is being sold on July 27 by Profiles in History auction house in Los Angeles and online. It is grouped in 268 lots and includes images of such famous actors as Sid Caesar, Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich.