The woman in Hitler’s Bathtub - revisited!
October 1, 2024 5:52 AM Subscribe
The woman in Hitler’s Bathtub - revisited (22 years later!). Or, The Lives of Lee Miller.
A biopic of Lee Miller is now in theaters, with Kate Winslet portraying Miller, focusing on her years as a war correspondent in WWII. But who was Lee Miller? Her son, Antony Penrose, wrote about her many lives in the book The Lives of Lee Miller. I count four lives and they are:
Life 1: Pioneering Vogue Model
Lee was a pioneering model for Vogue magazine. Vogue highlights some of her photos and covers.
Everything You Need to Know about Lee Miller in Vogue and Beyond
"Miller enters Vogue’s orbit by accident. “She was wearing a Parisian dress when she inadvertently ‘stepped into the path of an oncoming car and was pulled back onto the sidewalk by a well-dressed stranger [Condé Nast], into whose arms she collapsed. She ridiculously babbled on in French, evidently in a state of shock,’” reports Susan Ronald, the publisher’s biographer. Nast suggested Miller might work at Vogue; then editor Edna Woolman Chase arranged for Miller to be drawn by the French artist Georges Lepape. She appears on the March 15, 1927 cover of the magazine, where her cloche-covered head and pearl-wrapped neck dominate the cityscape; Miller is presented as the epitome of the modern woman; powerfully beautiful, streamlined in the Deco fashion, and slightly androgynous."
Lee Miller and Kotex:
"Not only did the photographer Lee Miller appear as the first real person in an ad for menstrual hygiene .. - she is probably the most important."
Life 2: The Artist, Surrealist and Photographer
But, Lee wanted to get behind the camera too and started her own photo studio. She also lived and worked with Man Ray.
How Lee Miller Out Surrealed the Surrealists (Aperture)
"1929, she got on a boat and tracked down the photographer Man Ray in Paris. “I’m your new student,” she told him. He didn’t take students, but he took her. For three years, they lived and worked together; Miller learned everything she could about making and developing pictures. He would sometimes pass assignments to her; as the story goes, Miller was at the Sorbonne medical school photographing something for Man Ray when she witnessed a mastectomy procedure. She took the severed breast to the offices of Vogue and photographed it on a dinner plate before she and the breast were thrown out."
Lee Miller and Picasso
"There’s a picture of the US photographer and war correspondent Lee Miller with Pablo Picasso, taken by her after the liberation of Paris in 1944. They are gazing into one another’s eyes with such intimacy that you feel you’re intruding on something deeply personal. Not romantic, exactly – although the way his hand grazes the back of her neck is certainly intimate – but profoundly loving, perhaps."
Bonus: Picasso's painting Lee Miller
Extra Bonus: Lee's photo of Barney Kiernan's Pub in Dublin, made famous in Ulysses.
Life 3: War Correspondent
This is the core of the film. In her later years, Lee was one of the few female war correspondents and so we can see horrors of WW2, familiar in some sense, but also as seen through a woman’s eye.
Imperial War Museum: Lee Miller’s Second World War
"Miller arrived in Normandy in July 1944, a month after the Allies launched their invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. No female war correspondents had been allowed to accompany the Allied Expeditionary Force during the initial phase of the invasion. Her first assignment was to report on American Army nurses working in a field hospital near Omaha beach, one of the two American assault beaches."
Life 4: Lady Penrose and the Home of the Surrealists
Lee married Roland Penrose and settled down in England.
Roland was the brother of Lionel Penrose and the uncle of Nobel-Prize winning physicist/mathematician Roger Penrose.
The house Roger and Lee lived in was visited by noted figures and became the English home of the Surrealists. They had one son, Antony Penrose.
It is called Farley Farm and can still be visited today.
Personal Note and Lee’s family:
The Miller family are family friends, in particular the descendants of Lee’s brother Johnny Miller, who was a noted aviation pioneer.
“a barnstorming pilot, the first person to make a US transcontinental flight in a rotorcraft, the first to land a rotorcraft on the roof of a building, and the first to fly a scheduled US mail rotorcraft service.”
A biopic of Lee Miller is now in theaters, with Kate Winslet portraying Miller, focusing on her years as a war correspondent in WWII. But who was Lee Miller? Her son, Antony Penrose, wrote about her many lives in the book The Lives of Lee Miller. I count four lives and they are:
Life 1: Pioneering Vogue Model
Lee was a pioneering model for Vogue magazine. Vogue highlights some of her photos and covers.
Everything You Need to Know about Lee Miller in Vogue and Beyond
"Miller enters Vogue’s orbit by accident. “She was wearing a Parisian dress when she inadvertently ‘stepped into the path of an oncoming car and was pulled back onto the sidewalk by a well-dressed stranger [Condé Nast], into whose arms she collapsed. She ridiculously babbled on in French, evidently in a state of shock,’” reports Susan Ronald, the publisher’s biographer. Nast suggested Miller might work at Vogue; then editor Edna Woolman Chase arranged for Miller to be drawn by the French artist Georges Lepape. She appears on the March 15, 1927 cover of the magazine, where her cloche-covered head and pearl-wrapped neck dominate the cityscape; Miller is presented as the epitome of the modern woman; powerfully beautiful, streamlined in the Deco fashion, and slightly androgynous."
Lee Miller and Kotex:
"Not only did the photographer Lee Miller appear as the first real person in an ad for menstrual hygiene .. - she is probably the most important."
Life 2: The Artist, Surrealist and Photographer
But, Lee wanted to get behind the camera too and started her own photo studio. She also lived and worked with Man Ray.
How Lee Miller Out Surrealed the Surrealists (Aperture)
"1929, she got on a boat and tracked down the photographer Man Ray in Paris. “I’m your new student,” she told him. He didn’t take students, but he took her. For three years, they lived and worked together; Miller learned everything she could about making and developing pictures. He would sometimes pass assignments to her; as the story goes, Miller was at the Sorbonne medical school photographing something for Man Ray when she witnessed a mastectomy procedure. She took the severed breast to the offices of Vogue and photographed it on a dinner plate before she and the breast were thrown out."
Lee Miller and Picasso
"There’s a picture of the US photographer and war correspondent Lee Miller with Pablo Picasso, taken by her after the liberation of Paris in 1944. They are gazing into one another’s eyes with such intimacy that you feel you’re intruding on something deeply personal. Not romantic, exactly – although the way his hand grazes the back of her neck is certainly intimate – but profoundly loving, perhaps."
Bonus: Picasso's painting Lee Miller
Extra Bonus: Lee's photo of Barney Kiernan's Pub in Dublin, made famous in Ulysses.
Life 3: War Correspondent
This is the core of the film. In her later years, Lee was one of the few female war correspondents and so we can see horrors of WW2, familiar in some sense, but also as seen through a woman’s eye.
Imperial War Museum: Lee Miller’s Second World War
"Miller arrived in Normandy in July 1944, a month after the Allies launched their invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. No female war correspondents had been allowed to accompany the Allied Expeditionary Force during the initial phase of the invasion. Her first assignment was to report on American Army nurses working in a field hospital near Omaha beach, one of the two American assault beaches."
Life 4: Lady Penrose and the Home of the Surrealists
Lee married Roland Penrose and settled down in England.
Roland was the brother of Lionel Penrose and the uncle of Nobel-Prize winning physicist/mathematician Roger Penrose.
The house Roger and Lee lived in was visited by noted figures and became the English home of the Surrealists. They had one son, Antony Penrose.
It is called Farley Farm and can still be visited today.
Personal Note and Lee’s family:
The Miller family are family friends, in particular the descendants of Lee’s brother Johnny Miller, who was a noted aviation pioneer.
“a barnstorming pilot, the first person to make a US transcontinental flight in a rotorcraft, the first to land a rotorcraft on the roof of a building, and the first to fly a scheduled US mail rotorcraft service.”
Man Ray's famous painting of a pair of lips floating above a forest, l'Heure de l'Observatoire or The Lovers, was painted after their breakup. The lips are Miller's.
I saw the movie "Lee" the other day and found it disappointing, though I'm happy to see her and her work get more attention. I've heard rumors that Man Ray's "solarization" technique was created by Miller accidentally when she was studying with him. Don't know if there's evidence for that.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:07 AM on October 1
I saw the movie "Lee" the other day and found it disappointing, though I'm happy to see her and her work get more attention. I've heard rumors that Man Ray's "solarization" technique was created by Miller accidentally when she was studying with him. Don't know if there's evidence for that.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:07 AM on October 1
Lee Miller: Witness to the Concentration Camps and the Fall of the Third Reich
posted by clavdivs at 7:16 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 7:16 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]
I don't have the direct link right now but there was a recent episode of Great Art Explained on youtube that was about the bathtub photo. Great stuff.
posted by HumanComplex at 9:00 AM on October 1
posted by HumanComplex at 9:00 AM on October 1
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posted by seanmpuckett at 6:43 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]