Lee Miller, the model who jumped into the trench
Perhaps that is why chance often played in his favour. I was going to cross a street New York paying no attention to a truck heading towards her, when the arm of Mr. Condé Montrose Nast , founder of fashion Y Vanity Fair , saved her from being run over. It was 1926 and Lee was 19 years old. . The following year she would be on the cover under the illustration of George Lepape .
Her cold and androgynous features made her the closest thing to a top model, and that meant working with photographers like Edward Steichen or George Hoyningen-Huene . But then the models had no control over her image, and one of Steichen's photos was used without Lee's consent for a sanitary napkin ad campaign. A scandal ensued and Lee's career faded.
Read in a shoot for Vogue
She did not give excessive importance to the mishap. Theodore Miller , her father, had always defended her dedicating her time to the same games as her two brothers. In the country setting of Poughkeepsie that meant tree houses, toy trains and the contraptions that revolved around Theodor's great hobby: the photograph . During her time as a model, Lee's interest was on the other side of the spotlight. The Kotex pad scandal broke the barrier.
Ten years earlier, a traumatic event had defined Lee's relationship with the camera. She was eight years old when she, On a trip to New York, she was raped . The rapist gave her gonorrhea. Her pain, shame, and dirty feeling caused him to have mood swings that worsened in adolescence.
Lee Miller
Her psychiatric treatment was complemented by sessions in which, in the presence of her mother, Lee posed nude for Theodor . This peculiar way of reconciliation with his physique established a vital and therapeutic link with the photographic process.
Therefore, when her career as a model ended, It was clear to Lee that her site was after the target . Attracted by the experimental surrealism of man ray , she showed up at her studio in Paris and offered to work with him. The artist not only agreed, but he fell in love with her.
For five years she was his collaborator. The relationship was turbulent . To the conflict caused by the constant appropriation of her works, the fight for an emotional independence that Lee had raised through therapy was added.
Lee Miller or the beauty and madness of Man Ray
The liberation of art was a masculine affair and the creators, with few exceptions, remained in the background. In the same way, free love was an anti-bourgeois imperative that Man Ray enthusiastically practiced , but that he did not look favorably on his partner. Lee didn't budge . She gained respect in the surrealist circle and established a close relationship with Picasso, Paul Eluard and Jean Cocteau.
The latter offered him to participate in his film The blood of a poet, in which she appears next to a plaster sculpture of herself.
The surreal aura favored the recognition of her work. at the exhibition International Photographers of the Brooklyn Museum she shared rooms with Cecil Beaton and Moholy-Nagy. But Lee was tired of the Parisian carousel and her altercations with Man Ray. In 1934 she carried out her affair with the Egyptian millionaire Eloui Bey and she married him.
After the separation from her, the photographer created a metronome that includes the following legend:
Cut out the eye of someone you loved who is no longer with you. Place it on the metronome pendulum and wait for it to reach the desired tempo. She takes a hammer and destroys it with one blow.
the years of Miller in Cairo they left images of a marked surrealist style, but the desert and the ruins ended up exhausting both her inspiration and her patience. When she returned to Paris three years later, Lee had become the myth of a languishing movement . It was then that she met ronald penrose , the English painter of the circle of Max Ernst with whom she would share the rest of her life.
The war found them in London. During the blitz , her house Hampstead it became one of the social centers of the city. Lee was documenting the effects of the bombing when the United States entered the fray. Despite the skepticism of the editor of fashion , the photographer was accredited and moved to France.
In Normandy she experienced the offensive that followed the landing. She jumped from the hospitals to the front lines and was one of the first people from the allied forces to entered Dachau concentration camp . From there she went to Munich , where settled in the house that had belonged to Hitler . She slept in his bed and took a picture of herself in the bathtub.
As stated David Sherman , the journalist who accompanied her those years, Lee lived a period of great fulfillment during the war. Despite the horror that surrounded her, her talent grew in the movement , in the immediate. She didn't get over her return to routine. Her attempts to return to normal collided with the hangover of what she had experienced.
Her motherhood did not help her overcome a depression that favored her dependence on her alcohol. She retired with Melrose to a farm in Sussex, abandoned the photograph, and directed her uneasiness to the kitchen. When Man Ray visited them, she offered him green chicken and blue macaroni.
Lee Miller, pure beauty
Lee Miller for Vogue