Marysa Maslansky, Founder of the Renowned Visages Photo Agency, Dies at 82

Marysa Maslansky Davis Factor

Marysa Maslansky, whose influential Visages Photo Agency represented such A-list photographers as Herb Ritts, Mary Ellen Mark and George Hurrell in the 1980s and ’90s, has died. She was 82.

Maslansky died Oct. 9 at her home in Los Angeles after a long illness, a family spokesperson announced.

Born in Pas-de-Calais, France, on April 27, 1944, Maslansky settled in Los Angeles in 1969 and worked as a journalist for the Sygma Photo News agency before heading Gamma Liaison, the L.A. branch of Gamma, the prominent French photo agency.

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In 1980, she founded Visages, and in addition to Ritts, Mark and Hurrell, the agency would become home to many other iconic celebrity and fashion photographers, among them William Claxton, Greg Gorman, Matthew Rolston, Paul Jasmin, Sofia Coppola, Brad Branson and Firooz Zahedi.

When Ritts started with Maslansky at Visages, his fee was in the range of $750 a day, the Los Angeles Times wrote back then. But by 1990, he was earning about $20,000 a day as one of the highest-paid commercial photographers in the U.S. at the time.

Visages closed its doors in 2000 amid the shift to digital, industry consolidation and competition from major syndicates including Getty Images and Corbis.

Maslansky was married to Michael Maslansky — a founding partner (with Pat Kingsley and Neil Koenigsberg) of what would become PMK Public Relations — from 1975 until his death in 1993 of stroke complications at age 55. His clients included Goldie Hawn, Sylvester Stallone, Liza Minnelli and Katharine Hepburn.

Survivors include her second husband, Christopher, son Max and daughter-in-law Nancy. Another son, Alex, died in 2023 at age 43.