Russell Young: Diamond Dust Icons

Russell Young takes two of the most photographed faces of the twentieth century and makes them feel unfamiliar again.

His Marilyn Crying series starts with a single image of Marilyn Monroe, hand wiping her eye, and reworks it across dozens of colorways: soft pastels, electric blues, deep reds, liquid gold. Each one is a hand-pulled screen print finished with real diamond dust, so the surface catches light differently depending on where you stand. The repetition isn't decorative. It's Young testing how much an image can change just by changing its color and surface, while the emotion underneath, vulnerability, stays exactly the same.

The Mick Jagger series works the same way but in a different key. Built from acrylic and screen print, these portraits catch Jagger mid-performance, fur collar up, full of motion. Where Marilyn is quiet and exposed, Jagger is loud and in control. Same diamond dust, same screen-printing technique, completely different energy.

What ties both series together is Young's skill as a printmaker. He's not just silkscreening a photograph. He's hand-pulling each print, layering ink and paint and diamond dust until the image feels physical, not flat. That craftsmanship is why collectors keep coming back to his work: these aren't just famous faces. They're famous faces made by someone who actually knows how to build a print.