Oh, you don't wish death upon anyone but if it happens, it happens. Those photos of yours suddenly go from interesting to profound coda. In 1962, Vogue commissioned Stern to shoot the 36-year-old actress Marilyn Monroe. Six weeks the pills got her and she was dead.

Stern's book of the three sessions called The Last Sitting was published 20 years later. It included photos Marilyn had hated and had crossed out with a chino graph pencil. One ran on the book's cover.

In a marvellous piece of symmetry, photographer Jesse Frohman, whose photo shoot of Kurt Cobain in a New York hotel's basement conference room would be his last in America, and the interview recorded his last-ever, has just released the book, Kurt Cobain: The Last Session, 20 years since Kurt exited through the gift shop.

The images of Cobain, standing pigeon-toed in thigh-length leopard jacket, white Jackie O glasses, ushanka hat, torn jeans pulled up and belted around his navel and black Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars, have become the most iconic - ever - of Cobain as the anti-super hero. Deliberately fragile. Overtly kooky.

And, here, on this hot spring afternoon in Australia, where Jesse, who happens to have a degree in economics, is exhibiting these photos, you feel compelled to ask, did the news of his death six months afterward feel like the bell-ring of a lucky poker machine?

Frohman, a remarkably young-looking 51 and dressed in fatigue pants, black t-shirt and black Converse, laughs because he sat on the photos for years, drip-feeding magazines he liked with them on various anniversaries and various specials.

He sold one to the fashion designer Marc Jacobs a couple of years after Cobain died. And that was kind of it. Most of them, precious Polaroids and negatives, the original contact sheets, all sat in boxes in his Manhattan loft.

"I never thought of it as a goldmine and it never did become a goldmine," he says.

But, still, he wasn't oblivious to the implications and, when their paths crossed, he said to Bert Stern, "Bert, Kurt's going to be my Marilyn."

Stern laughed and said that there could never be anyone quite like Marilyn.

"But he has become my Marilyn," says Jesse.

"I've had a long career shooting a lot of famous people but if you Google my name that's what comes up. And it's the same with Bert. He had a long and lucrative and interesting career but if you Google his name it's Bert Stern and Marilyn Monroe."

The book was published after years of cajoling because, more than anything, Jesse says he struggled with the idea of the book being more about his ego than a great moment.

"It was easy for publishers and friends to tell me to do it but I thought of it as an abbreviated shoot. We were supposed to have hours and we had 30 minutes. In my worst negative moments I felt like I was just taking advantage of a situation I had been put in. At that moment they were just another rock band – who knew how important they'd become, that Kurt would die at the peak of his fame," he said.

"But in my better moments, I knew the fans would really want this book. What's the point of just leaving the pictures in boxes and no one sees them?"

I know photographers. I used to be one (of sorts). And when you're promised five hours for the shoot of your life and you get a half-hour, I know how huffy you can get. Jesse knows.

"I was upset! I was pissed!" he says.

"I was frustrated as heck. They said they'd shoot more pictures and they didn't. I went to the concert that night and I just didn't care to take any more pictures. I wasn't that invested in it. I just didn't appreciate 'em that much. But, now, I have no regrets. I was fortunate they showed up at all. He could've blown me off, gone to the concert, and disappeared out of town. But he was interested. He let me throw him up against a wall. And those moments in the book, those moments in-between  the iconic hero images, show that he was not just a serious artist but that he was… silly. That he was a prankster."

You can buy the book here ...and if you're in Sydney, Jesse Frohman will be at Blender Gallery in Paddington from 6pm, December 4.