Bertram “Bert” Stern was an American commercial photographer. Born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish immigrant parents, his interest in photography appeared at an early age after coming across a magazine photo by Irving Penn. He served as the base cameraman and photographer during the Korean War, where his love of photography was reaffirmed. After the war, Stern found a job in the mailroom at Look magazine, where he met and befriended film director Stanley Hubrick. This friendship would lead to some of Stern’s most iconic photographs including the movie poster for Kubrick’s film “Lolita”, starring Sue Lyon. Look magazine art director, Hershel Bramson, gave stern his first assignment as a commercial photographer for a 1955 campaign introducing Smirnoff vodka to the American market. Stern pitched the idea of a pyramid reflected upside down in a martini glass. Years later Stern explained his inspiration for the campaign came from “walking on 5th avenue with a Martini glass filled with water, until he noticed the Plaza hotel was inverted in the glass that acted like a lens and turned the image upside down.” It was then that Stern came up with the idea to photograph the Pyramid of Giza upside down in the glass, but would require him to go to Egypt to do it. When asked by the advertising agency how he planned to shoot that without building a set, Stern is alleged to have said that he was going to Egypt, to shoot the pyramids themselves. That campaign, “Driest of the Dry,” revolutionized product advertising in the late 1950s and early 1960s and led Stern to become known as the original Mad Man. Throughout the last half of the 20th century, he shot famous models, actors, musicians and celebrities including Brigitte Bardot, Twiggy, Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper, Louis Armstrong, Veruschka and most famously Marilyn Monroe six weeks before her death in 1962.