Legendary Lee Miller

by Marité Légé- Germain ARPS

MOST PEOPLE BECOME aware of Lee Miller through her association with Man Ray in the Paris of the 1920s, where she was his model and photographic assistant. Lee Miller was young, utterly beautiful and charming, very talented and an inspiration to all who came into contact with her. To this day, she has retained cult status among photographic students, especially women. Yet, as is often the case, there was a dark side to her nature. Tragedy seemed to follow her throughout her life.

Amazingly, Tony Penrose only became aware of his mother's work after her death when by chance he came to discover her papers in the attic. He was a late baby, born when she was 40, and they were at loggerheads throughout his youth. Whilst at boarding school, he did not even know what she looked like.

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Sadly, after her return from World War II, Lee Miller had become prey to alcohol abuse; her erratic behaviour was extremely difficult to live with. Her own biography was called "The Lies of Lee Miller". Yet she could be warm and friendly to those who met her. She had a very tender and caring side.

 Lee Miller was born in a small town in upstate New York in a comfortably-off middle class family. She was brought up as a tomboy and came to learn photography at an early age through her father, who had an amateur darkroom. But her idyllic childhood was shattered at the age of seven when she was raped and infected with syphilis, for which she endured the terribly painful treatments of the day, her siblings being moved away so they would not hear her scream. It was a childhood trauma which forever marked her. Her psychologist told her to use sex as an amusement, with love to be held sacred - a strategy which certainly coloured her relationships with men from then on.

Tragedy struck again in her teenage years when her first love drowned during a freak boating accident.

Lee Miller started her career in front of the camera as a Vogue model, having been signed up by Condé Nast himself after he had saved her from being run over by a

car in New York! She was photographed by some of the great photographers of the day, such as Edward Steichen. But her modelling career came to an abrupt end when she posed as the "Kotex Girl" in a wonderfully demure picture, nevertheless considered unacceptable in the prudish New York of the 1920s.

She decided to return to Paris in 1929, her first visit having been as a student a few years earlier. Her subsequent tempestuous love affair with Man Ray is well documented. The Surrealists would only consider free love and took a stand against being tied down by marriage and family - although some of them ended up marrying several times. Lee Miller whole-heartedly embraced the precepts of Surrealism and free love, which made Man Ray insanely jealous.

Consciously or subconsciously trying to control his muse, Man Ray produced some of his best known photographs showing dismembered parts of her body such as "Wooden Torso", and "The Eye of Lee Miller".