Caught in the moment

WE ARE used to seeing stills from old movies, classic celluloid moments captured forever — Marilyn Monroe in a white halter-neck dress standing on a vent, James Dean frowning, Elizabeth Taylor kneeling in a bikini, Charlton Heston in a chariot.

These images are so much part of our 20th century memory that we don’t even register them any longer, so ingrained are they in our cultural subconscious.

What we tend not to see are these old school movie stars away from the camera but still on set. A new exhibition in London is full of such previously unseen pictures, perhaps the most dramatic a shot of Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Eve Arnold, one of the most important photographers of the last century who died in January this year, three months short of her 100th birthday. Arnold was a photojournalist, best known for her candid, beautiful black and whites of Marilyn.