The collection of photographs by Milton H. Greene consists of images of stars of American cinema. Portraits of iconic figures from the first half of the 20th century— now increasingly less recognizable, increasingly distant. And yet at the center of the collection one star still shines with such intensity that it is commonly believed to be an archive of her photographs. Everyone else dissolves in her light. Everyone — including the author of the photographs—fades in the presence of Marilyn Monroe.

The hypnotic charm of vulnerable, almost childlike innocence combined with shameless and ostentatious seduction. She ignited the collective imagination so effectively that even today she remains the heroine of its most intimate fantasies. The story of Monroe’s life and mysterious death unfolded somewhere between misfortune and scandal, and is submerged in contradictions that make certainty impossible. She embodies the archetype of the beautiful, dead young girl full of secrets—someone about whom the more we learn, the more new layers of an unsolvable mystery emerge. The original prototype of the enigmatic Laura Palmer. Anentanglement recurring in a complicated story, as a result of which some of the photographs presented, featuring Monroe and other celebrities, eventually found their way into the Wrocław archive, raising questions about value, ownership, and
political turmoil surrounding the image.

In dialogue with Greene’s photographs, we present works by contemporary artists working across different media, who experiment with the theme of the image—also its new forms emerging within internet culture—the boundaries of intimacy, and the tension between authenticity and performed identity. Their practices also address the individual’s entanglement in social constructs, relations of influence and power, the dynamics of product and capitalism, and the archive as a resource in relation to the system it simultaneously helps to produce. In their work they employ contemporary tools and aesthetics, as well as fluid and experimental digital forms. By commenting on Greene’s photographs, they inscribe new contexts and readings into the story of Monroe.

As David Lynch once put it: Everything is about Marilyn Monroe.