Pioneering photographer Eve Arnold dies

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Eve Arnold, a pioneering female photojournalist known for her candid shots of Marilyn Monroe and other Hollywood celebrities, has died in London. She was 99.

Arnold, born in Philadelphia in 1912 to Russian immigrant parents, died Wednesday in a nursing home, Magnum Photos said in a release.

Arnold began photographing in 1946 while working at a photo-finishing plant in New York City and then studied photography in 1948 with Alexei Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research.

She became the first woman photographer to join Magnum Photos, an international photographic cooperative co-founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

"She will perhaps be best remembered for her exceptional photographs of people; the famous, politicians, musicians, artists and the unknown," Magnum Photos said. "Her intimate, sensitive and compassionate 10-year collaboration with Marilyn Monroe has cemented her as one of the most iconic portrait photographers of our time, but it is the long term reportage stories that drove Arnold's curiosity and passion."

During the late 1970s she completed a landmark photography project in China after becoming one of the first westerners to be granted a visa after the United States and China established diplomatic relations.

In 1995 she was made a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and elected Master Photographer by New York's International Center of Photography, the Los Angeles Times said.