Lee Miller

The photo is from a display at the little shop where I went to get a new battery for my phone. I like the contrast, the broken glass patterns, and the copper bits. 

What I want to talk about is Lee Miller, the fascinating Rolleiflex photographer who began her career as a model but decided she’d rather be behind a camera than in front of it. I have a book of her work published by Thames & Hudson last year, with a foreword by Kate Winslet (about whom more in a moment) and an introduction by Miller’s son, Antony Penrose. I’ve been poring over her photographs and admiring her work. She studied stage lighting and art before becoming a photographer, and it shows.

Her personal life was as riveting as her photographs. Miller apprenticed with Man Ray (and was his lover for a time) and had a lifelong interest in surrealism. She flourished in a circle of artists in Paris in the 30s, married an Egyptian but left him after a few years, and then met and fell in love with a British aristocrat, Roland Penrose, who also had an interest in surrealism and was friends with Picasso, Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and others. Miller and Penrose eventually married, but during the war she became a war correspondent (oddly enough, for Vogue magazine). After the war she had a son, Antony Penrose, who has devoted himself to writing about his mother and archiving and exhibiting her photography.

Now a film has been made about Miller, starring Kate Winslet, who talks about it in a Vogue interview. (If you take a look, I recommend fast forwarding to the end of the first two minutes, skipping the chat about chickens and tables and getting to the point, which is Miller.) So far Lee has only appeared at film festivals, and the vile so-called “Official Trailer” is anything but official. I hope Winslet and the woman director have created a psychological portrait of Miller. Her work, both before, during, and after the war, is powerful. Some of it is unforgettable. And apparently it wrecked her.

After photographing the horrors of Dachau and of hospitals in Austria filled with starving children, she developed PTSD and medicated it with alcohol. She went on making photographs but never recovered. I hope I get to see the film. Meanwhile, I am lingering over each of her carefully-crafted photographs.

P.S. Nicky R found this website concerning release dates for those in the UK. 

P.P.S. I found a release date of September 20, 2024 for the USA. I wonder why they are holding it back for such a long time.