Pioneering American photojournalist and portrait photographer Eve Arnold, best known for her intimate shots of Marilyn Monroe, has died at the age of 99.

She died peacefully in her sleep at a nursing home in London, said representative Jonathan Bell of Magnum Photo Agency, of which she was a member.

Arnold made her name with photographs of a variety of people, from the rich and famous to the poor and unknown.

Her revealing and intimate shots of Monroe over a 10-year collaboration gave her prestige, as did her photographs of the likes of Queen Elizabeth, Jacqueline Kennedy and Malcolm X.

But the Philadelphia-born photographer was equally interested in those not in the public eye.

"If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given," she had said. "It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument."

Her first story documented fashion shows in the 1950s in segregated Harlem, New York before moving to London in 1962.

She worked at publications including London's Sunday Times and captured life in the Arab world in the late 1960s and early 70s before later in the decade going on to become one of the first Westerners to document China.

"I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women," Arnold once said, according to her 1976 book The Unretouched Woman.

Arnold has been widely exhibited and received numerous prizes, including the lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers.

She published over 15 monographs, including her 1997 book In Retrospect.

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Reuters