Marilyn Monroe's final photo-shoot images to be auctioned

London: Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe's final photo-shoot snaps are set to go under hammer in Texas next week.

Prints of photos taken by Bert Stern for Vogue are available to bid on in the auction by Heritage Auctions Texas, which opens on March 10, reported the Daily Telegraph.

Stern, who died in 2013, shot a series of photographs of Monroe for Vogue in June 1962, which were the last photos published of the actress and model before her sudden death that August aged 36.

The photographs came to be known as The Last Sitting. Also for auction are prints of rare photographs taken a month after Stern's, by Monroe's close friend George Barris, whom she met while working on her 1955 film, 'The Seven Year Itch'.

The photos include images of Monroe looking playful on a Californian beach, and more sultry black and white images of her indoors.

Barris' photographs were destined for a book he was working on about the icon, which was put on hold after her tragic death just three weeks later. Experts say the six prints for auction could fetch up to 4,000 pounds apiece.