Marysa Maslansky, whose Visages photo agency was home to some of the most celebrated celebrity and fashion photographers of the 1980s and ’90s, died at her home in Los Angeles on October 9, 2026, after a long illness. She was 82. A family spokesperson announced her death.
From Pas-de-Calais to Hollywood
Maslansky was born in Pas-de-Calais, France, on April 27, 1944, and settled in Los Angeles in 1969. She began as a journalist for the Sygma photo news agency before running Gamma Liaison, the Los Angeles branch of the prominent French agency Gamma, an apprenticeship in the business of getting pictures of famous people into print.
Visages
In 1980 she founded Visages, which became one of the most influential agencies in the industry. Its roster included Herb Ritts, Mary Ellen Mark and George Hurrell, along with William Claxton, Greg Gorman, Matthew Rolston, Paul Jasmin, Brad Branson, Firooz Zahedi and a young Sofia Coppola. Ritts’s rise showed what the agency could do: when he joined Visages his day rate was around $750, and by 1990 he was earning about $20,000 a day as one of the highest-paid commercial photographers in the United States. Visages closed in 2000, as the shift to digital photography, consolidation and competition from giant libraries such as Getty Images and Corbis transformed the business.
Family
Maslansky was married from 1975 to Michael Maslansky, a founding partner of the publicity firm that became PMK, whose clients included Goldie Hawn, Sylvester Stallone, Liza Minnelli and Katharine Hepburn; he died in 1993 at the age of 55. Her son Alex died in 2023 at 43. She is survived by her second husband, Christopher, her son Max and her daughter-in-law, Nancy.