Book Report: Lee Miller, Model, Photographer, Cook, Enigma

Stumbling Across A Mystery

How could I not have heard or read about Lee Miller? We went by chance to an exhibit of her photographs at the Palazzo Pallavicini in Bologna.  The description of Lee Miller described her as “Beautiful and charming but also determined, cultured, daring. A true non-conformist female icon, Elizabeth “Lee” Miller lived several different professional lives: from modelling for Vogue (in 1927) to being a muse for artists like Man Ray, Picasso (who painted her in six paintings), Roland Penrose (she was his second wife) and Jean Cocteau (in whose film she appeared). And then also a portraitist, a war reporter and even a cook.” I was intrigued by the last three words. 

A Life Too Startling To Be Fiction

To briefly encapsulate the astonishing, brutal, captivating life she led would be difficult, but here goes: She was raped at the age of 7, from which she contracted gonorrhea and had to suffer the trauma of pre-antibiotic treatment.  In her teens she was expelled from several schools and saw her boyfriend die from drowning. Then, in a bizarre moment, Condé Nast, the owner of Vogue, pulled her back from being hit by a truck. He offered her a modelling contract (who wouldn’t have, she was stunning). She was wildly successful until Edward Steichen took some modelling photos of her, and she became the face of Kotex. In the 1920s no woman’s face advertised a product for  menstruation, only “discreet drawings and descriptions.” Her modelling career in the US was not so discreetly ended, as no fashion house dared to to have the Kotex girl model their styles.

With a determination that was to be a Lee Miller hallmark, she moved to Paris to study photography and, with the door opened by Edward Steichen, studied, ate, and slept with Man Ray. She credits him with teaching her how wonderful food and wine were, and that meals were treasured times. Lee returned to New York after her relationship with Man Ray had become toxic and promptly opened a photography studio with her brother during the Great Depression. Lee once again turned this period into a financial success, using her talents in set design, photography and lighting along with her Paris cachet and connections.  She then married a wealthy Egyptian who had fallen for her in Paris. This brought additional adventures of the kind one can enjoy with a large stash of cash. She was reunited with her friends from Paris and met some new ones – including Roland Penrose, Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso — and they all felt the darkness from the Spanish Civil War and the shift in the German political scene. Her marriage with Aziz Eloui Bey ended predictably.  She had been forbidden to hang any modern art in downstairs rooms of their home in Egypt, and had not been allowed to choose any furnishings. 

Lee moved in with Roland Penrose in London just as the Blitz started. As an American, she did not have clearance to work at any real job. Her letters (of which she made copies to keep) make fascinating reads.  When Fortnum & Mason declined to sell her a one-of-a-kind display spice hamper, they asked why she was so determined to have it. She explained that when cities are under siege, the defenders end up eating rats, and if that was her fate during the war, at least hers would taste good! Unable to persuade Fortnum, Lee learned to create feasts out of what she could forage. She also finally became an accredited War Correspondent for Vogue after she had submitted a smashing piece with photographs on Edward R. Murrow. She documented women in the war effort – women sailors, searchlight operators and Land Girls – with marvelous photos and text. And yes, she landed with the Normandy Invasion too, probably the only female war correspondent reporting from combat zones, and was put under house arrest after her scoop on the siege of St. Malo. Still, she managed to cover Liberation Day in Paris, Belgium and Luxembourg. One of my favorite photos, which I purchased from the site, is the one with champagne and gasoline buried in snow on the balcony of her room in a Paris hotel.  The archives offer a mesmerizing  gallery of her photography as well as images of some of her colleagues. 

Reading her letters and viewing her photographs when she entered the concentration camps with Patton’s army is mind boggling, along with the now iconic photo of her sitting in Hitler’s bathtub (in his secret Munich apartment, to which  she had been given the address and key).  And of course she went to his ransacked lair at Berchtesgaden and stole a a silver serving tray with the AH initials and swastika engraved on it. She used it for many of her dinner parties. She was quite a celebrity, justifiably after the war, but the nightmares of what she had photographed and written about haunted her, and she sought alcohol for relief. After a post-war victory journey to the US where she caught up with friends who had fled Europe during the war, she became pregnant, married Roland Penrose, returned to England and buried all of her correspondence and thousands photographs in her attic. She never talked about this period of her life again. 

“I keep saying to everyone, ‘I didn’t waste a minute all my life’ – but I know myself, now, that if I had it over again, I’d be even more free with my ideas, with my body and my affection.”

A Memoir and a Cookbook