Michael Ochs – described by the Hollywood Reporter as ‘the pre-eminent photo archivist of pop culture’ – has died aged 82.
He was born in Austin, Texas in 1943, and grew up in New York and Ohio with his father, a doctor, his Scottish-born mother, and two older siblings. His father had served as a medic during World War II and his lasting trauma led to his being repeatedly institutionalised. The family moved frequently, and music became a refuge for the young Michael. “I’d go to school, didn’t know anybody. I’d come home and play records,” he said.
After graduating in journalism from Ohio State University, Michael became manager to his brother, folk singer Phil Ochs, and moved to Los Angeles, working as a photographer and PR executive at Columbia Records.
“I saw them start to throw away photos of performers who were dropped from the label and went, ‘Wait a minute, I’ll bet the photos will became just as rare [as the records], too,'” he recalled. “I only began collecting them because I was such a music junkie that I wanted to document everything.”
Initially he supplied photos for free to the music press, but when one publication credited ‘the Michael Ochs Archive,’ he saw the germ of a business idea. Many of his images in a seminal 1976 book, The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll.
“I use this concept which could come off as BS, but I use it to talk people out of stuff,” he told the L.A. Times in 2003. “It’s the greater good concept: ‘It should be in the archives and you know it.'” The collection grew to include movies and political figures. “There are certain givens that are icons, like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis Presley … It’s hard to see a trend or anything. It goes all over the place.”
In 1987, Michael acquired lost rolls of film shot by Ed Feingersh in 1955. Only a handful of his photos had been published in a Redbook magazine layout, headlined ‘The Marilyn Monroe You’ve Never Seen.’ Others – including images of Marilyn dabbing Chanel No. 5 on herself, travelling the New York subway, and gazing over the city from her hotel balcony – added a new layer to the Monroe iconography.
A book, Marilyn Monroe: Fifty-Five (aka Marilyn Monroe: March 1955) was published in 1990, and a range of posters and postcards was released in partnership with Marilyn’s estate. The book has been translated into German (Marilyn in New York) and French (A Blonde in Manhattan.)
Marilyn Monroe: From Beginning to End, another collection from the Michael Ochs Archive, was published in 1997. Photographer Earl Leaf first worked with Marilyn in 1950, when the upcoming starlet posed for him at the Holmby Hills estate of her agent and lover, Johnny Hyde.
Only a handful of those images were published in Marilyn’s lifetime, but Leaf later photographed Marilyn at the height of her fame, following her to press parties, premieres, and awards ceremonies.
In 2007, Michael sold his archive of over 250,000 photos (including almost 1,000 of Marilyn) to Getty Images for an undisclosed sum; and he later produced a documentary, Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune, tracing his brother’s musical legacy and troubled life, which had ended prematurely with his suicide in 1976.
Michael Ochs died at his Venice Beach home on July 23, 2025, after a five-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease. He is survived by his wife Sandee, sister Sonny, daughter Meegan, and two stepsons.
The Marilyn Report 