John Bryson, celebrity photojournalist

LOS ANGELES – John Bryson, a photojournalist for Life and other magazines known for shooting celebrities as they went about their daily lives, has died.

He was 81. “I don’t think I’m a lapdog photographer, but I’ve orbited around (celebrities), and I’ve had a lot of har-dee-hars with them,” Bryson told the Los Angeles Times in 1985.The Texas native began his career as a photographer and picture editor at Life, and later freelanced for Life, Look, Holiday and other publications.He assembled picture books on industrialist Armand Hammer and actress Katharine Hepburn, who once described Bryson as “mean as a snake and dear as an angel”.Among his well-known works were pictures of Ernest Hemingway kicking a beer can in the snow and Salvador Dali wearing a crown made of sausages.Bryson also photographed Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood, Jason Robards Jr, Frank Sinatra, John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev.During the height of the Cold War, he elicited hearty laughter from Khrushchev by offering to trade his expensive Nikon camera for a Soviet Missile, according to the 1959 book ‘Moscow Gatecrash: A Peer Behind the Curtain’.- Nampa-AP”I don’t think I’m a lapdog photographer, but I’ve orbited around (celebrities), and I’ve had a lot of har-dee-hars with them,” Bryson told the Los Angeles Times in 1985.The Texas native began his career as a photographer and picture editor at Life, and later freelanced for Life, Look, Holiday and other publications.He assembled picture books on industrialist Armand Hammer and actress Katharine Hepburn, who once described Bryson as “mean as a snake and dear as an angel”.Among his well-known works were pictures of Ernest Hemingway kicking a beer can in the snow and Salvador Dali wearing a crown made of sausages.Bryson also photographed Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood, Jason Robards Jr, Frank Sinatra, John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev.During the height of the Cold War, he elicited hearty laughter from Khrushchev by offering to trade his expensive Nikon camera for a Soviet Missile, according to the 1959 book ‘Moscow Gatecrash: A Peer Behind the Curtain’.- Nampa-AP