The Many Lives of Lee Miller

Lee Miller with parents and brothers
Poughkeepsie 1914

Lee Miller, model

Just seen the newly-released film on Lee Miller, that most interesting and important twentieth century icon whose son, Anthony Penrose I met when I booked him to come to talk to Wye Arts Association [Kent] years ago. At that meeting he gave me his wonderful book on Lee and I began to appreciate further that she was so much more than a beautiful blonde model discovered by Conde Nast. As a young woman in New York, through Conde Nast, she achieved the accolade of an early

Lee modelling for Vogue cover in Art Deco style
15th March 1927

appearance on the cover of the March 15th 1927 Vogue (the first of many) which lead to her considerable popularity as a model with the fashionable photographers of the day and indirectly, to her decision to live in Paris for a time, a city she had loved and experienced as a student with a family friend in her late teens. As well as modelling, Lee also increased the volume of her photography in New York before eventually departing for Paris and the beau monde. There, in the early Thirties, she slept her way around the artistic milieu and became the lover and protege of Surrealist photographer, Man Ray. With him, she invented the solarization *** technique in photography; explored the photography and art she had loved as a child, and further developed her own Surrealist photographic/artistic eye. In short, Lee matured into an excellent photographer while leading a hedonistic life steeped in the artistic, creative Parisian world where her extraordinary almost perfect blonde good looks attracted the male gaze in abundance.

Roland Penrose with Picasso 

She had two marriages; one to Aziz Eloui Bey, an Egyptian nearly twenty years her senior, who arrived by chance in St Moritz when Lee was there. Despite her then current relationship with Man Ray, the two were quickly infatuated with each other and Aziz left his wife, Nimet. Her second marriage was to Surrealist artist, Roland Penrose with whom she remained for the rest of her life and with whom she had her son, Anthony.

Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub 1945
Hitler and wife Eva Braun had 
committed suicide but Germany had
not yet surrendered.

Lee Miller photo of Dachau barracks 1945

During WW2, [1939-1945] she became a famous U.S. war correspondent for Vogue, covering the siege of St Malo; the liberation of Paris; spending time in more than one of the concentration camps importantly including Dachau which she entered the morning after its liberation and which produced a large range of photographs which ‘shook the world’. She witnessed many, many of the shattering horrors of the camps and these distressing images, in addition to the long-term psychological damage of a rape by a family member on leave from the Marines, when she was seven, from which she contracted gonorrhea, Lee became deeply affected by PTSD and eventually, a depressive alcoholic. Anthony Penrose remembers the excessive alcohol and the PTSD, during the first 25 years of his life, until his relations with his mother broke down totally, and he left to travel, staying away for three years and returning only after his marriage. His wife subsequently engineered a reconciliation between them two years before Lee's death in 1977. 

S.S. Guard in canal. Dachau. Lee Miller 1945  

However, in his compelling book, The Lives of Lee Miller, Penrose introduces the reader to the myriad facets of an amazing life in which Lee was inclined to divide off feelings and relationships into inner compartments which never interacted at all. She became a noted cook, throwing herself into preparing food, experiencing culinary possibilities and inventing dishes and combinations with artistry and enthusiasm. Along the way she also became a gourmet, sometimes difficult to entertain but always an enthusiastic guest and hostess. 
.As she aged, her beautiful looks deteriorated and she had weight problems all of which added to her propensity for depression.

Anthony Penrose spent years after his mother’s death from cancer in 1977, on working through her extensive photographic archives, (most of which was unknown to him) unearthing a rich array of her work on such artists [and friends] as Braque, Picasso, Eluard, Miro and Ernst plus many additional contemporary photographs included in his vivid biography which also provides much of contemporary current affairs as context.  Predominantly however, his book unearths the several lives of his mother, Lee Miller, and describes the many talents of this unusually gifted and iconic artist, photographer, Surrealist muse and Vogue war correspondent. 

Lee with son Anthony Penrose, born March 1947.
Lee's maternal instincts were scant and his nurse,
Annie Clements, became his adored mother substitute

..

Lee Miller, war correspondent

By Anthony Penrose
Recommended!

****

Solarization

Lee Miller Solarization

Solarization can refer to a technique used in photography that involves exposing a partially developed photograph to light before continuing processing. This can reverse some of the tones in a negative or print, and introduce pronounced outlines of highlights.