June 1st is Marilyn Monroe's birthday.  There are countless biographies of her, but I wanted to focus on some of the portrait photography books about her.

Life: The Loves of Marilyn looks at her romantic life but also at her photographic legacy through Life Magazine in the 1950s and 1960s.

Marilyn Monroe: Metamorphosis is a lavish compilation from many sources of photographs of Marilyn – over half of them have not been published before.

Marilyn in the Flash (that's a clever title!) focuses (I'm pretty clever too!) on her image in hundreds of unpublished and also well known images.  There aren't many more famous pictures or scenes than this skirt, caught in an updraft from a subway air shaft image … and the whole question of what she had on underneath.

Remembering Marilyn goes through her life from youth to her death. When you're this beautiful and iconic, each photo is like a cool breeze on a hot day.

Milton's Marilyn shows us the work of photographer Milton Greene who was Marilyn's artistic advisor, agent and business partner from 1954 to 1957.

Marilyn: The Niagara Photographs by Jock Carroll shows photos taken in 1952, sponsored by a Canadian magazine, of Marilyn at Niagara Falls during the filming of one of her early movies.

Marilyn by Magnum shows many different Magnum Cooperative photographers' take on Marilyn.

Before Marilyn: The Blue Book Modeling Years looks at the early part of Marilyn's career before she became a huge film star and had more control over her own image.

James Spada, the well known celebrity writer, compiled an early selection of photographs of Marilyn in his book Her Life in Pictures.

And lastly Bert Stern's The Last Sitting was taken a few weeks before Marilyn's tragic accidental death. She went through Stein's proofs and "X"ed out many of the images but those that remain and the proofs themselves are pretty amazing.

Marilyn would have been 91 years old today.

Happy Birthday Norma Jeane.