Lee Miller
Above: Self portrait with headband, Lee Miller Studios Inc., New York, USA, c. 1932; ©Lee Miller Archives, England 2023. All rights reserved. Courtesy Lee Miller Archives, England and Gagosian
BY FEDERICA BELLI
What remains of an artist’s life? Some might think of the photographs, some might focus on the contributions to the collective creative language, others on the stories brought to life through a lifetime of investigations. As remains clear to artists themselves however, those are just punctuation marks in a poem that is worth much more. And few photographers have made it as clear as Lee Miller. What remains of her life, a multilayered tale of unprecedentedly bold choices, is a rhythmic and entrancing succession of seemingly unrelated personas.
Lee Miller, Sandra models for Pidoux, Vogue Studio, London, England, 1939 ©Lee Miller Archives, England 2023. All rights reserved. Courtesy Lee Miller Archives, England and Gagosian
Few photographers have embodied in such a totalizing way Nietzsche’s definition of life as a work of art. How? Miller was never afraid to dance through life by exploiting each and every talent she possessed, shifting (in a most contemporary way) from modeling, to photographing daily life, to shooting fashion stories, to boarding a flight towards the front. Still today, a woman artist constantly faces, at least internally, the societal constraints of not being too many people at once; of narrowing down a definition of what she wants to be, of not taking up too much space out there. Well, Miller definitely took all the space necessary to reinvent herself as many times as she deemed interesting to, showing a tactical intelligence worthy of a chess player.
Though her father had been taking pictures of her since childhood, her first life changing encounter in the field happened to be with Condé Nast. As she was walking in the streets of Manhattan, the casual encounter with the editor actually saved her life: after nearly being struck by a car, the editor ended up scouting her and suggesting she give modeling a try. That day, not only was a life saved, but irreversibly changed too: as soon as she realized she had made a name for herself as a model on Vogue covers, she leveraged the connections she’d made to finally take her representation in her own hands and start observing rather than being observed. Modeling could not be enough for such an active and voracious mind, who had often been subject to abuse from her own relatives: she needed to take control of her own future and feel independent from how men saw her.
Lee Miller, Auxiliary Territorial Service searchlight operators, South Mimms, North London, England, 1943; © 2023 Lee Miller Archives, England. All rights reserved.
Lee Miller, Portrait of Space, Al-Bulwayeb, near Siwa, Egypt, 1937; © 2023 Lee Miller Archives, England. All rights reserved.
Once again showing an undeniable logical sense, Miller decided to begin pursuing photography by assisting one of the most promising authors of the time: Man Ray. What soon became a creative couple proved to be an extremely prolific encounter, one that led not only to the formation of Miller’s photographic eye but also to the invention and first experimentations of the solarisation process. Moving to Paris meant building a completely different life, but also absorbing a visual culture unknown to her: she soon made hers the techniques of the great photography master. Clearly however, the restless woman she was could not be someone’s shadow for long. Nor could she fit into a fixed persona for the rest of her life, at least not so early on. Well aware of her outcast and restless nature, she went on seizing opportunities, transforming into whoever or whatever necessary to live her time to the fullest, and doing so with an ease that made it look like a dance.
Well aware of her outcast and restless nature, she went on seizing opportunities, transforming into whoever or whatever necessary to live her time to the fullest...
With no time to waste, Miller moved back to New York and boldly appropriated her ex-lover’s name to advertise her photographic vision in the big city. Not long after, her studio was being regularly hired by department stores and luxury brands to represent a lifestyle that was all about a meticulous quest for beauty and elegance. However, her adventurous nature could be forced into silence only for so long: soon after having fallen in love, she decided to follow her heart to Egypt.
How could such an untameable woman fit in the restrictive Egyptian society of the time? She simply could not. For a brief time, however, those days gave birth to some of her most unique photographs. Escaping from the bustling city of Cairo, she took on the habit of driving and immersing herself in the mesmerizing light of the desert. Given her sensibility and wildness, through those images she built her own unique desert wonderland.
Escaping from Egypt soon enough, she found herself knocking at the door of Vogue offices, this time in England, and with something completely different in mind. As war mobilized her whole country (and the whole Western world), she mobilized as well. Miller understood that by taking part in the army, she could not only have access to something that had become very precious – photographic paper – but also communicate with magazines through the privileged channel of army reporters. Once again, her intelligence allowed her to subtly infiltrate a system she did not even approve of and make it hers. While the editor of the magazine asked for a cursory essay on the consequences of war, she actually (as usual) went full on, with close-up portraits of dead Nazis, gruesome first-line reportages and even a portrait of herself bathing in the bathtub of a freshly dead Hitler.
In a way, she ended up loving this new scenario as well. She constantly managed not only to reinvent, but most importantly to become at ease with her ever-changing personas and to deeply love every single life she came to lead. Each extreme choice and periodic rebirth however left a mark on her.
Lee Miller, Opposite, above: Limbering up for the big push, Vogue, London, England, 1942; ©2023 Lee Miller Archives, England. All rights reserved.
Clearly unable to recover from the end of a war that had become so exciting and prolific to her, Miller could not help but find her newly stable life in England unbearably depressing. She had come to enjoy a volatile life so much that she had become unable to merely exist. Thus, she slowly decayed, hiding her previous lives from everyone around her in the English countryside – even to her son – till the day of her death. And, notwithstanding her attempt to protect her family from her multiple past personas, after death her relatives could not avoid delving in the fascination for a human who had been so many others in a single life as well. The light of such an apparent excitement to be alive somehow ended up shining on her son too, and the outcome of his explorations are now published in the book, Lee Miller: Photographs.
In a way, what remains of Miller’s life is much more than the humanity captured by her photographic talent or the pioneering invention of solarisation – as if those were not enough already. Had it not been her, it would have been someone else. History shows quite ruthlessly how no one really is irreplaceable, doesn’t it? What remains unparalleled is her lesson on how to carry a life with such enthusiastic restlessness, her determination to be perceived as a feminine human rather than a woman, her unmatched ability to dance through a life that encompassed wartime, rape, objectification and alcoholism, with the poetic elegance only an enlightened human can embody.
Lee Miller, Boot and ammunition, St Malo, France, 1944; ©2023 Lee Miller Archives, England. All rights reserved.
What remains of Miller’s life is her impact not only on any woman who is still wrestling with the perception others have of her, but on any human who is just trying to experience this lifetime as ruthlessly and voraciously as she did. Because, let’s be honest here, why do we even become photographers if not to devour life as deeply as is humanly possible?
