An auction of Marilyn Monroe photos taken by celebrity photographer Milton Greene went on sale in Warsaw this November.

The sale, which took place at the Dom Aukcyjny Desa Unicum auction house, attracted some 600 bidders, with the most valuable photograph being a black and white portrait of a barefoot Ms Monroe posing in a tutu. The photo went under the hammer for zł.60,000 – significantly above the piece’s asking price.

The second-biggest seller was an iconic photo from a shoot entitled the “Black Session” which raised zł.50,000.

Other photographs of famous Hollywood legends by Milton Greene, including ones of Liza Minnelli, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, were also sold at the auction, which attracted bidders from as far a field as Ecuador and Saudi Arabia.
The collection of Milton Greene photographs was put on sale by the Polish Treasury, which obtained them in 1995 as part of a debt settlement with a Polish foreign-debt management agency. Many of the 4,000 images included in the collection were not put on sale and are still in the possession of the Treasury.