Nude Bent Forward, Paris, France, c.1930 © Lee Miller Archives, England 2007. All rights reserved
Richard Moss takes in the remarkable life and art of Lee Miller – currently revealed in a retrospective at the V&A
The centenary of Lee Miller, a woman whose ‘lives’ ranged from fashion model and Surrealist through to war correspondent, housewife and recluse, is currently being celebrated in a welcome retrospective exhibition at the V&A.
The Art of Lee Miller runs until January 6 2008 and brings together key images from the Lee Miller archives to offer a glimpse into the remarkable life and to act as a showcase of the talents of the celebrated American photographer.
From a very early age it seems Miller’s was no ordinary life. Born in Poughkeepsie New York in 1907 she suffered rape at seven, contracted gonorrhoea and suffered years of painful and invasive treatment. Her father also photographed her relentlessly.
The exhibition theorises that these experiences made her a Surrealist even before she went to Paris and what emerges from the early photographs, ranging from a young tomboy in dungarees to a beautiful cover girl for Vogue, is an ambiguous character who nevertheless relentlessly pursued her art.
After nine years as a model she sought out Man Ray in 1929, cornering him in a Parisian café – informing him that she was his new student. Eventually the Surrealist photographer demurred to the beautiful Vogue cover girl – and Lee Miller’s remarkable photographic career began.
As Man Ray’s pupil, lover and muse, she soon began to learn the tricks of the Surrealist trade - as evidenced by the accomplished solarised portraits and avant-garde nudes. You could say this early work is derivative and certainly heavily influence by her Surrealist peers.
But looking at them today in the context of their time these photographs reveal a dizzying mix of art, craft and experimentation as well as offering a tantalising glimpse into a go-getting life.
Untitled (Exploding Hand), Paris c.1930 © Lee Miller Archives, England 2007. All rights reserved
Lee's was a life full of mystery, glamour - and portraits of famous people, including Chaplin, Picasso, Dali and countless other names abound. She also found time to play a statue for Jean Cocteau in his short film, the Blood of a Poet, which also gets a welcome airing here.
Eventually in 1932 she left the world of the Surrealists – and the lovelorn Man Ray – to set up a commercial studio in New York where, between a little modelling and the odd fashion shoot, she turned her skills to portraiture and advertising work.
The studio portraits from this period are very much ‘of their time’. Skilled use of dark and shadow illuminate the sitters who are cast in the classic noir mould – like the World Heavyweight boxing champ Gene Turney and film star Gertrude Lawrence - whilst her own self-portrait for Vogue shows how she continued to develop her skills on both sides of the camera.
There was also room for the odd bit of experimentation with a return to solarisation (Toy Piano 1933 and portraits of Dorothy Hill and Lilian Harvey) but Miller’s New York studio phase was evidently an unfulfilling interval and it was soon interrupted by an impulsive disappearance into Egypt and marriage to the engineer and businessman Aziz Eloui Bey.
Photographs from her time in Egypt show an artist with an eye for the quirky – and a keen sense of a good picture. A series of studies of the desert and ruined buildings culminated in her stand out photo of a gauze-covered window whose weather beaten frame looks out onto the rocky plain of desert. Portrait of Space, was taken near Siwa Egypt in 1937.
Later on, after leaving Bey for Roland Penrose, the spirit of pre-war artistic decadence is captured in a picture featuring Nush and Paul Eluard, Penrose, and Man Ray and Ady Fidelin picnicking together on the Ile Sainte-Marguerite in Cannes.
One can only wonder at the conversation and dynamic of the group – the men in their shirtsleeves, slacks and caps, the women bear-breasted like Tahitians in some Gauguin painting.
The happy superficiality of this picture, full of late thirties studied bohemia, is heightened by the historical context – and the shadow of war.
Portrait of Space, Nr Siwa, Egypt, 1937 © Lee Miller Archives, England 2007. All rights reserved
And it is the war that brings Lee Miller’s life and work into sharp focus. Having persuaded her editor at Vogue to let her operate as freelance war correspondent she spent the early years of World War Two bringing her Surrealist eye to Blitz-ravaged London.
Photographs from this era evoke the surreal quality of life during the Blitz: a tailor’s dummy standing awaiting removal amidst a mess of ruined shops, a shattered typewriter, a statue fissured by an explosion and the now famous photograph of models sitting outside an air raid shelter wearing home front paraphernalia, helmets and masks.
Her skill with shadow and light also came into good use at this time as evidenced by the smoky studio portraits and atmospheric studies of ATS searchlight operators and WRENS as part of series for Vogue exploring Women and War.
The Allied invasion of Europe really gave Miller her break, as can be seen in her first combat zone photographic essays. There are dramatic shots of a casualty evacuation hospital in Normandy, the liberation of Paris and the siege of St Malo and the horrors of the Buchenwald and Dachau death camps.
The famous shot of Miller in Hitler’s bath shows her posing for the moment - perfectly framed between a marbled bust and photo of the Fuhrer - her muddy combat boots on the white bath mat.
Inevitably as the war progressed her submissions to Vogue became more hard-hitting. A photo essay titled Germans are Like This’ juxtaposes images of ordinary German people with the horrors of the concentration camp, her accompanying text reveals a writer grappling with the horrors of war.
“Germany is a beautiful landscape dotted with jewel like villages, blotched with ruined cities, inhabited by schizophrenics. The land war was not fought enough on German soil, the punishment for aggression has not yet been sufficiently severe.”
Lee Miller in Hitler’s bath, Munich, Germany, 1945 © Lee Miller Archives, England 2007. All rights reserved
It’s compelling and heart-felt writing born out of brutalizing experiences and although she reportedly agonised over many of her despatches, she managed to turn in some of the most affecting journalism of the period.
Facsimiles of these famous issues of Vogue show what a surprising publication the magazine was during the war; fashion shoots and beautiful girls sit next to Miller’s photos from combat zones and shocking pictures and reportage from the death camps.
Equally Miller’s experience of the war seems to be a bizarre one that mixed death and glamour. A shocking picture of the daughter of the mayor of Leipzig, who poisoned herself in 1945, sits next to a tired looking Miller next to her old friend Picasso in Paris.
Lee Miller was also the first correspondent into Berchtesgarden, site of Hilter’s Mountain retreat, the Eagle’s Nest. Her photo essay, filed from the former heart of the Third Reich, again shows her rising admirably to the pivotal moment in history.
“I saw the war end in a plume of smoke curling up from the remnants of Hitler’s mountain retreat.”
Having glimpsed her wartime work and experiences, it’s tempting to read into her later photographs some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder such as restlessness and a lack of direction. A final photo essay for Vogue features portraits of celebrity friends, including Picasso and Max Ernst helping out on her Sussex farm where she had semi-retired.
The most telling picture shows the hostess asleep, hiding underneath a coat on her sofa and the post war period saw her fall into a cycle of alcohol and depression.
By the time she died from cancer at the age of 70 Lee Miller had literally buried her career and it was her son Antony Penrose, who revitalised her reputation after he found thousands of her negatives stuffed away in various places around the house – many of them are on display for the first time here.
To close the exhibition the V&A have hung a painting of the hostess, by her old friend Pablo Picasso. It offers a telling final comment and depicts her as a strong, beautiful and Surreal woman with a single tear hanging from her eye.
