Tronhard
Member
To me, Lee Miller is one of the most intriguing characters, in or out of photography, in the 20th Century. She was, in many ways, ahead of her time: a trailblazing renaissance ‘new woman’ who took head-on the male dominance of the world in which she lived, & lived without compromise.
Lee Miller was born in the Poughkeepsie, a satellite town of New York, in 1907. Her mother was a nurse, her father an engineer & a keen amateur photographer. Lee was one of three children: the other two being boys, & she grew up doing many of the things they did with the support of her father, who doted on her & took photos of her from her birth onwards. His fixation on her would today be considered problematic, especially as he frequently photographed her in the nude, even into her twenties, and along with her female friends. That said, she became quite used to being in front of the camera, but eagerly learned what was going on behind the lens too.
Her association with an engineer father and two boys meant that she learned many of their skills & would disassemble and build all sorts of devices. She was obviously very intelligent and was fast to pick up and apply new concepts and skills.
Her life changed when she was only seven. While at a relative’s home she was sexually assaulted by a young guest, & suffered not only the trauma associated with that, but also was infected with gonorrhoea. In the era before antibiotics, the treatments administered by her nurse mother were prolonged, intrusive & extremely painful. It changed her from a lively, but socially moderate tomboy to a fiery rebel who was expelled from just about every school in the district. To complicate matters, it was taboo to mention her experiences & she was encouraged to keep her trauma hidden – a habit she was to keep through the rest of her life. Also, the psychologist who dealt with her told her that sex was not love, & that too was filed away for later application.
By her teenage years she had blossomed into a highly intelligent, creative young woman who was known for rakish & outrageous behaviour – having short-term assignations with many boyfriends. After somehow finishing her school education, at the age of 18 she went to live in Paris and embarked on a series of adventures to find something to settle into. She was talented on the stage, but preferred to work on lights and stage sets – and she could wire circuits with the best of them. A year later she moved to New York, supported by her family, & danced in reviews as she learnt set design at an experimental drama program at Vassar college. Here she was to learn more about how to place actors, light them & create sets within which they played their parts – all of which would be applied later in her career.
She went on to learn other painting & sketching skills, studying in the Arts Students League of New York but quickly found that she preferred photography. One day, crossing the street without looking, she was almost killed by a passing truck but was saved in the nick of time by none other than Condé Nast, owner of Vogue magazine. By now, clothed in the latest Paris fashions with stunning good looks – she was tall, athletic, blond & blue eyed – he was immediately taken with her & saw her as just the person to front his new Garçon look of the 20’s.
Within weeks, her image was on the front cover of Vogue & from then on her career as a model skyrocketed. She was considered one of the five most beautiful women in the world, & used her knowledge of light, cameras, & experience in modelling learnt from her father to quickly become adept, & essentially the precursor of the super model that emerged later in the century. Her fame brought her to the attention of many influential people, especially men, & she leveraged those connections to her advantage. She was photographed by famous photographers including Edward Steichen, Arnold Genthe, Nickolas Muray, & George Hoyningen-Huene from all of whom she learned a lot more about cameras, studio lighting & the business of fashion photography.
Her ascendancy came to a rather abrupt end when a photograph taken of her was used, without her permission, for a Kotex advertisement for feminine protection. In an era when such things were not mentioned, that image killed her career for some time. She was not overly upset, saying that she would rather take a picture than be one, & she embarked on a program to do just that.
She wanted to learn fashion & creative photography &, in 1929, armed with a letter of introduction from Steichen, she went to Paris to get Man Ray, himself regarded as the avant-garde doyen of photography & painting, to teach her. When she encountered him, she told him bluntly that she was going to be his student. His response was that he didn’t take students & he was going on holiday – her counter was that she was going with him.
She began an intense & fraught three year professional and intimate relationship during which Man Ray fell passionately in love with her & taught her much of his craft. Quickly, she became highly skilled in fashion photography, & in the more creative genre of surrealism – becoming a muse & equal co-creator rather than a student. She modelled & photographed for Paris Vogue (Frogue) & took many of Ray’s assignments when he was too busy. She even had her own studio near her own apartment in Paris. Many images taken then could as easily be attributed to Miller & Ray. She moved in exalted circles - among Miller's friends were Duchess Solange d'Ayen–the fashion editor of French Vogue magazine, Pablo Picasso & fellow surrealists Paul Éluard & Jean Cocteau.
As a surrealist, Man Ray conformed to the idea of free love – but for men only. Lee Miller was having none of this, & said she would have affairs with whomever she wanted – & she did, much to the chagrin of Ray, who found that in trying to possess her he was driving her away.
It was during this turbulent time that they had an accidental discovery of the technique of solarization. While developing a negative plate in the darkroom, something ran over Miller’s foot. She yelped & clicked on the light, which was not a good idea as the plate was not fixed. Ray immediately turned it off again & developed the plate more in hope than expectation. The result astounded them – the image was partly compromised, but resulted in a halo effect around the contours of the subject. They quickly did experiments to try to control the process so it could be reliably repeated & it became a trademark of both of their works.
Ray's fears were further compounded when Miller was asked to be a lead in an Avant-guard surrealist production by Cocteau about a statue that comes to life & destroys the man who owns it. The allusion to his situation & its success added even more to Ray’s angst. Eventually, Miller left Ray & returned to New York, to much acclaim & publicity, while Ray had a nervous breakdown, threatening to shoot himself, & creating vengeful artistic pieces.
Miller’s return to NY in the throes of the depression could have gone badly, but she had powerful backers & she set up a studio, which she built & wired herself with all sorts of devices to automatically provide the latest in both artistic & creative lighting, & to provide an opulent venue for her exalted clients – including chef-cooked meals.
Quickly, her studio became the place for the elite to get their portraits taken, along with film stars. She lived a privileged, but hard-working existence & continued to have affairs with many suitors. She also modelled again for Vogue & photographed for them, being the first to have the images taken by her & of her attributed to her in publication.
During 1932 Miller was included in the Modern European Photography exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York & the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition International Photographers with László Moholy-Nagy, Cecil Beaton, Margaret Bourke-White, Tina Modotti, Charles Sheeler, Man Ray, & Edward Weston – she was now considered an elite photographer. In 1933, Julien Levy gave Miller the only solo exhibition of her life.
One of her clients was the wife (also one of the most beautiful women of the time) of an Egyptian elite Aziz Eloui Bey – and it was not long before she began an affair with him. Eventually this led to him divorcing his wife, who then committed suicide. Eventually, & quite suddenly, Lee married him and abruptly closed her studio to move to Egypt. She found Egypt both exciting & boring. Boring was the expat society that dominated her social class, mostly made up of British wives, whom she scathingly described as the ‘pearls & satin brigade’. For her, excitement was in the desert & the native people, & she took off for extended periods (often with men in tow) to explore & photograph: no longer needing to do commercial work & creating some of her best surrealist images.
However, it all had to come to an end. Aziz, was wise enough to realize that despite her efforts, she could not settle down to the society in which he moved and could not be contained. So, in 1937 she returned for an extended vacation to Paris, and quickly started an affair with the surrealist Roland Penrose. They contrived to go together through the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and when she returned to Egypt it was not for long. Aziz gave her enough shares to live comfortably and let her go her own way. She was both a muse and contributor to Penrose’s own sculptural works and painting, and she added to that with more surrealist photography. She returned to Penrose only weeks before WWII was declared and she set up house with him.
To be continued...
Lee Miller was born in the Poughkeepsie, a satellite town of New York, in 1907. Her mother was a nurse, her father an engineer & a keen amateur photographer. Lee was one of three children: the other two being boys, & she grew up doing many of the things they did with the support of her father, who doted on her & took photos of her from her birth onwards. His fixation on her would today be considered problematic, especially as he frequently photographed her in the nude, even into her twenties, and along with her female friends. That said, she became quite used to being in front of the camera, but eagerly learned what was going on behind the lens too.
Her association with an engineer father and two boys meant that she learned many of their skills & would disassemble and build all sorts of devices. She was obviously very intelligent and was fast to pick up and apply new concepts and skills.
Her life changed when she was only seven. While at a relative’s home she was sexually assaulted by a young guest, & suffered not only the trauma associated with that, but also was infected with gonorrhoea. In the era before antibiotics, the treatments administered by her nurse mother were prolonged, intrusive & extremely painful. It changed her from a lively, but socially moderate tomboy to a fiery rebel who was expelled from just about every school in the district. To complicate matters, it was taboo to mention her experiences & she was encouraged to keep her trauma hidden – a habit she was to keep through the rest of her life. Also, the psychologist who dealt with her told her that sex was not love, & that too was filed away for later application.
By her teenage years she had blossomed into a highly intelligent, creative young woman who was known for rakish & outrageous behaviour – having short-term assignations with many boyfriends. After somehow finishing her school education, at the age of 18 she went to live in Paris and embarked on a series of adventures to find something to settle into. She was talented on the stage, but preferred to work on lights and stage sets – and she could wire circuits with the best of them. A year later she moved to New York, supported by her family, & danced in reviews as she learnt set design at an experimental drama program at Vassar college. Here she was to learn more about how to place actors, light them & create sets within which they played their parts – all of which would be applied later in her career.
She went on to learn other painting & sketching skills, studying in the Arts Students League of New York but quickly found that she preferred photography. One day, crossing the street without looking, she was almost killed by a passing truck but was saved in the nick of time by none other than Condé Nast, owner of Vogue magazine. By now, clothed in the latest Paris fashions with stunning good looks – she was tall, athletic, blond & blue eyed – he was immediately taken with her & saw her as just the person to front his new Garçon look of the 20’s.
Within weeks, her image was on the front cover of Vogue & from then on her career as a model skyrocketed. She was considered one of the five most beautiful women in the world, & used her knowledge of light, cameras, & experience in modelling learnt from her father to quickly become adept, & essentially the precursor of the super model that emerged later in the century. Her fame brought her to the attention of many influential people, especially men, & she leveraged those connections to her advantage. She was photographed by famous photographers including Edward Steichen, Arnold Genthe, Nickolas Muray, & George Hoyningen-Huene from all of whom she learned a lot more about cameras, studio lighting & the business of fashion photography.
Her ascendancy came to a rather abrupt end when a photograph taken of her was used, without her permission, for a Kotex advertisement for feminine protection. In an era when such things were not mentioned, that image killed her career for some time. She was not overly upset, saying that she would rather take a picture than be one, & she embarked on a program to do just that.
She wanted to learn fashion & creative photography &, in 1929, armed with a letter of introduction from Steichen, she went to Paris to get Man Ray, himself regarded as the avant-garde doyen of photography & painting, to teach her. When she encountered him, she told him bluntly that she was going to be his student. His response was that he didn’t take students & he was going on holiday – her counter was that she was going with him.
She began an intense & fraught three year professional and intimate relationship during which Man Ray fell passionately in love with her & taught her much of his craft. Quickly, she became highly skilled in fashion photography, & in the more creative genre of surrealism – becoming a muse & equal co-creator rather than a student. She modelled & photographed for Paris Vogue (Frogue) & took many of Ray’s assignments when he was too busy. She even had her own studio near her own apartment in Paris. Many images taken then could as easily be attributed to Miller & Ray. She moved in exalted circles - among Miller's friends were Duchess Solange d'Ayen–the fashion editor of French Vogue magazine, Pablo Picasso & fellow surrealists Paul Éluard & Jean Cocteau.
As a surrealist, Man Ray conformed to the idea of free love – but for men only. Lee Miller was having none of this, & said she would have affairs with whomever she wanted – & she did, much to the chagrin of Ray, who found that in trying to possess her he was driving her away.
It was during this turbulent time that they had an accidental discovery of the technique of solarization. While developing a negative plate in the darkroom, something ran over Miller’s foot. She yelped & clicked on the light, which was not a good idea as the plate was not fixed. Ray immediately turned it off again & developed the plate more in hope than expectation. The result astounded them – the image was partly compromised, but resulted in a halo effect around the contours of the subject. They quickly did experiments to try to control the process so it could be reliably repeated & it became a trademark of both of their works.
Ray's fears were further compounded when Miller was asked to be a lead in an Avant-guard surrealist production by Cocteau about a statue that comes to life & destroys the man who owns it. The allusion to his situation & its success added even more to Ray’s angst. Eventually, Miller left Ray & returned to New York, to much acclaim & publicity, while Ray had a nervous breakdown, threatening to shoot himself, & creating vengeful artistic pieces.
Miller’s return to NY in the throes of the depression could have gone badly, but she had powerful backers & she set up a studio, which she built & wired herself with all sorts of devices to automatically provide the latest in both artistic & creative lighting, & to provide an opulent venue for her exalted clients – including chef-cooked meals.
Quickly, her studio became the place for the elite to get their portraits taken, along with film stars. She lived a privileged, but hard-working existence & continued to have affairs with many suitors. She also modelled again for Vogue & photographed for them, being the first to have the images taken by her & of her attributed to her in publication.
During 1932 Miller was included in the Modern European Photography exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York & the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition International Photographers with László Moholy-Nagy, Cecil Beaton, Margaret Bourke-White, Tina Modotti, Charles Sheeler, Man Ray, & Edward Weston – she was now considered an elite photographer. In 1933, Julien Levy gave Miller the only solo exhibition of her life.
One of her clients was the wife (also one of the most beautiful women of the time) of an Egyptian elite Aziz Eloui Bey – and it was not long before she began an affair with him. Eventually this led to him divorcing his wife, who then committed suicide. Eventually, & quite suddenly, Lee married him and abruptly closed her studio to move to Egypt. She found Egypt both exciting & boring. Boring was the expat society that dominated her social class, mostly made up of British wives, whom she scathingly described as the ‘pearls & satin brigade’. For her, excitement was in the desert & the native people, & she took off for extended periods (often with men in tow) to explore & photograph: no longer needing to do commercial work & creating some of her best surrealist images.
However, it all had to come to an end. Aziz, was wise enough to realize that despite her efforts, she could not settle down to the society in which he moved and could not be contained. So, in 1937 she returned for an extended vacation to Paris, and quickly started an affair with the surrealist Roland Penrose. They contrived to go together through the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and when she returned to Egypt it was not for long. Aziz gave her enough shares to live comfortably and let her go her own way. She was both a muse and contributor to Penrose’s own sculptural works and painting, and she added to that with more surrealist photography. She returned to Penrose only weeks before WWII was declared and she set up house with him.
To be continued...
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