Marysa Maslansky

Marysa Maslansky died on 9 October 2026 at her home in Los Angeles after a long illness. She was 82. A family spokesperson announced her death, and it was reported by The Hollywood Reporter on 23 October 2026, two weeks later. The specific cause was not made public.

She was survived by her second husband, Christopher, her son Max and her daughter in law Nancy. Her son Alex had died in 2023. No public funeral or memorial details had been announced.

Marysa Maslansky was born on 27 April 1944 in Pas-de-Calais, in northern France. Little has been published about her childhood and education. In 1969 she moved to Los Angeles, the city where she would spend the rest of her life and build her career.

Maslansky began in the photography business as a journalist for Sygma Photo News, one of the major French news photo agencies. She later headed Gamma Liaison, the Los Angeles branch of the Gamma agency.

In 1980 she founded Visages, an agency representing photographers for magazine, advertising, record and studio work. Its roster came to include Herb Ritts, Mary Ellen Mark, George Hurrell, William Claxton, Greg Gorman, Matthew Rolston, Paul Jasmin, Sofia Coppola, Brad Branson and Firooz Zahedi. The agency was based on Sunset Boulevard, and she registered Visages as a trademark in 1984.

Her work with Ritts became the best known example of her eye for talent. According to the Los Angeles Times, Ritts charged about 750 dollars a day when he began working with her and around 20,000 dollars a day by 1990. In 1991, when Ritts and columnist Liz Smith held exclusive rights to Elizabeth Taylor's wedding at Neverland Ranch, Maslansky predicted that sales of the pictures, which were to benefit AIDS research, would top one million dollars.

She also encouraged George Hurrell, the master of 1930s Hollywood glamour photography, to work again. She told Vanity Fair in 1985 that she had forced and begged him to bring out his old large format camera, despite his belief that nobody wanted that style any more. In 1995 she praised the Los Angeles stylist Chantal Cloutier for helping to make the city known for fashion talent.

Visages closed in 2000 amid the shift to digital photography, industry consolidation and competition from syndicates such as Getty Images and Corbis.

In 1975 Maslansky married Michael Maslansky, a founding partner, with Pat Kingsley and Neil Koenigsberg, of the firm that became PMK Public Relations, whose clients included Goldie Hawn, Sylvester Stallone, Liza Minnelli and Katharine Hepburn. He died in 1993 of complications from a stroke, aged 55. She later married her second husband, Christopher. She had two sons, Max and Alex. Alex died in 2023 at the age of 43.

For two decades Visages was one of the agencies through which magazines, studios, labels and advertisers commissioned celebrity and fashion photography in Los Angeles. Maslansky's support helped turn Herb Ritts into one of the best paid photographers in the United States and helped bring George Hurrell back to work, contributing to a revival of classic Hollywood glamour portraiture in the 1980s. The photographers she represented produced many of the defining images of film and music stars of the era.