Audrey Hepburn. Photographs 1953-1966

The Photographer and the Girl: The Multifaceted Beauty of Audrey Hepburn. Throughout his successful career as a Hollywood photographer, Bob Willoughby captured iconic images of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jane Fonda, but his absolute favorite subject was Audrey Kathleen Ruston, who later became known as Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruson, and is better known as Audrey Hepburn. One morning in 1953, Willoughby was hired to photograph the starlet who had just arrived in Hollywood. For the portraitist, who was often said to have perfected the photojournalistic film still, this was actually a rather uninteresting assignment, but when he encountered the Belgium-born grace, he was immediately captivated. "She shook my hand like... well, like a princess and dazzled me with that smile that God created to melt men's hearts," he recalled. As Hepburn's career took off after her Oscar win for Roman Holiday, Willoughby became her friend and confidant, photographing her both at work and at home. His equally perfectionistic and tender images, which accompanied her journey from her film debut to the career pinnacle of My Fair Lady in 1963, convey the many facets of Hepburn's beauty and elegance. They show her on set with colleagues, but also in private settings. This great platonic-photographic love affair resulted in an unparalleled visual documentation of one of the most iconic beauties of the 20th century.