Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Man Ray, and The Surrealists

Elizabeth "Lee" Miller is often called a photographer, but in reality she was so much more. Not only was she a famed war correspondant for Condé Nast's American Vogue during a time when women went to war as nurses, but she was also a Muse, innovator, and visionary.

"I keep saying to everyone, "I didn't waste a minute, all my life - I had a wonderful time," 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 affections".

Lee Miller to Roland Penrose, September 9, 1947

Many of Lee' minutes were astounding ones. One minute in New York she decides to step off a sidewalk and is rescued from being hit by an oncoming car by an editor at Vogue. The next minute she's a celebrity - a top model. The next minute her career as a model is over all because of one of her photographs appearing in an ad for feminine hygiene products (Kotex).

Streichen, the photographer from whom Lee was learning the foundation for what would be her real contribution to the craft of photography - what he called "faking" -his term for using interventions such as shading, marking, and other manipulations of the negative to capture the truth.  Since she had already announced her intentions to become a photographer, Lee decided to go to photography school, but the discipline needed didn't suit her. She was a star who had a stable of lovers and wanted to go back to the life she'd seen in Paris. So Streichen offered to make up for his masculine accident by introducing Lee to Man Ray and Lee left for Europe.

Once in Paris, Lee made her way to Man Ray's studio at 31 bis rue Campagne-Première only to learn that Man Ray had left for the summer from the concierge. Upset by the news, Lee crossed the Boulevard Raspail  and sat down at the corner cafe to have a Pernod with the owner and then she met Man Ray.

"He kind of rose up through the floor at the top of the circular staircase. He looked like a bull, with an extraordinary torso and very dark eyebrows and dark hair. I told him boldly that I was his new student. He said he didn't take students, and that anyway he was leaving Paris for his holiday. I said, I know, I'm going with you - and I did".

In the twenties to be "done" by Man Ray meant you were somebody and he lived a luxurious lifestyle. He and the former "Madame Man Ray" as Kiki de Montparnasse was called by French society had split up the year before and so Man Ray was free to take his new American student who had a thing for older men to Biarritz for the summer. Before becoming "Lee Miller" she would first become the next Madame Man Ray.

And what fun she must have had. Man Ray who was the only photographer than André Breton considered a "Surrealist",was completely in love with Lee, and was living the high life of fast cars and snappy dressing. Then came the stock market crash and suddenly no one could afford to have their portrait "done" by Man Ray anymore and he sunk into depression.

Then one day Lee turned on the light and discover the process she and Man Ray (who was furious that Lee had "ruined" the negatives of Madamoiselle Solidor, but would later take credit for its discovery) would call solarization.

When Lee wanted her own studio, Man Ray helped her find one not too far away from his own. They spent their days in Man Ray's studio and their nights chez Lee. Then Lee fell in love with Aziz Eloui Bey and though she had to be discreet with Aziz because he was married, everyone in Montparnasse knew Lee had left Man Ray and Man Ray wasn't happy to have lost the women he loved. Later her and Aziz would marry.

It took many years for Lee to find her way. Her war photography is for me the pinnacle of her career as a "photographer". Instead of returning to the US and safety, she decided to photograph the war and its aftermath - images that would haunt her for the rest of her life. After the war she returned to Farley Farm and discovering she was pregnant with Roland Penrose's child, she divorced Aziz.

The rest of Lee's life was plagued with troubles. She suffered from clinical depression and post traumatic stress disorder and took to drinking heavily. During the 50's and 60's her and Roland's Farley Farm became an artistic mecca and was visited by Picasso, Man Ray, Henry Moore, and Max Ernst (to name a few). Lee gave up the studio for the kitchen and became a success gourmet cook. She died of complications due to cancer in 1977.

Her son has kept Farley Farm and the Penrose-Miller collection accessible to the public. Lee's legacy lives on. I would need more than just my fingers and toes to count the number of people I know - women, photographers, men, fashion designers, writers - who have been influenced by either her work or her life. For my part I discovered Lee Miller through my grandmother who once mentioned to me when I was working in fashion by taking pictures of details on vintage clothing to inspire the designer I was working for that there had been an "American lady who started by doing the same thing and ended up being a Muse for Cocteau named Lee Miller". Years later I remembered her name and  read Carolyn Burke's biography "On Both Sides of the Camera" - which I can't remember if I bought it or got it off a friend who has forgotten I have it and whom I have forgotten lent it. The reason why is because it was bought and stamped from Shakespeare & Co. and I would never let them stamp a book I bought there (they stamp it so you can't return it), but at the same time I wrote something in pencil on one of the pages, which I wouldn't do if I was borrowing a book...so it's a mystery.

Here's what I wrote on page 245 after the words "Lee was fearless, she had the soul of an adventurer," Charles Roux remarked fifty years later - still amazed at her (Lee's) transformation into "a reporter of a kind we no longer have." Lee wrote as she lived, inventing her own brand of first-person journalism. "The muse of artistic Paris, the beauty among beauties", Charles Roux reflected, "had become a writer"."

12h14, Ligne 2, Paris

It is impossible to say with words the deep felt joy I feel upon reading this snippet of text. Though I am not a great beauty; I am a plain thing and I haven't Lee's abundance of talent in so many things. But I have a-"mused" myself and finally after knowing so long I would get to it but never when. I have become a writer. The greatest agony of my life has ended at long last. I am glad I subconciously had the foresight to buy myself some Chanel earlier in the day as I haven't the time to do it tomorrow."

(The reader needs to know that once upon a time I celebrated my life by buying something from the Chanel on rue Cambon and then having champagne at the Ritz on Place Vendome when things were really good or simply window shopping and walking around the Place Vendome when things weren't so good.)

Buchenwald.