Lee Miller: Witness to the Holocaust (Part 2)

Stories of Art

This episode concludes the biography of Lee Miller, tracing her transformative journey from a 1930s fashion model and surrealist muse to a courageou

Key takeaways

• Lee Miller's photography style evolved from fashion-inspired aesthetics to raw, authentic documentation of war atrocities.
• She utilized her background in surrealism to find 'ready-made' surrealism within the chaos of the Blitz and liberated Europe.

Main topics

• Lee Miller's biography
• WWII War Correspondence

Notable quotes

I swallowed hard on what were trying to be tears and remembered a movie actress kissing a handful of earth.

Conclusion

A profound exploration of how extreme historical trauma can fundamenta

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm Alastair Souk. And I'm James Fox. A beautiful young blonde woman wearing the insignia of the German Red Cross on an armband around one sleeve of her double-breasted greatcoat appears to swoon over the arm of an imposing leather sofa. Bathed in gorgeous light, she has the quality almost of a religious sculpture in a church. Her pose, her expression, mouth half open, call to my mind the ecstasy of St Teresa, you know, that famous 17th century marble altarpiece by Bernini, the Italian artist. Yet just visible above her right shoulder, there's a single popped sofa button that's dangling by a thread, which suggests that something isn't right, because this pretty nurse isn't in raptures. She's dead. So, James, that's just a little description of a photograph balancing beauty and horror, which was taken in April 1945 by the American photographer Lee Miller inside Leipzig's town hall, which is where she encountered the bodies of a high-ranking Nazi official and his family, who, as the Allied forces were pressing into Germany, had chosen to die. by suicide rather than be captured. Her name was Regina Lisso, and according to Miller, she had extraordinarily pretty teeth, which I always think is really tellit, given that Miller, as we found out in the last episode, was famously gap-toothed. And as her biographer, Carolyn Burke, has argued, this blonde Aryan beauty looks like a younger version of herself. Now, if that is true, then... This photograph could function on some, just bear with me, unconscious level. I know you're a meaning sceptic, but I can see from your expression where this is going. But the photograph, maybe it does function as a metaphorical self-portrait in which Miller, now a courageous war correspondent, is laying to rest her modelling past. Speaker 2 (2:08) I don't know what you make of that, James. Either way, what do you think that this extraordinary Speaker 1 (2:13) picture reveals about her photography during the Second World War? It is extraordinary, isn't it? One of the most interesting things about this image is that two of the other great photojournalists of the age, Robert Capper and the wonderful Margaret Burke White, who would make for a great episode or series, in fact, they photographed the... the same scene. And it's really instructive to compare how these different photographers captured that scene. What's Speaker 2 (2:37) the Speaker 1 (2:37) difference? Well, for Capa, this scene is part of a much wider, more violent survey of what is happening on the front line in April 1945. Margaret Birkwhite pulls back. She shows the entire room with the three members of the Lysow family dead. Right. But Lee Miller, as you've described, homes in. on the daughter, on the beautiful, blonde, fantastically toothed 20-year-old Regina Lissou. And I think there is a lot going on. And I think you're completely right. There is something that is... In some ways, it feels like this is a combination of Lee Miller's past as a fashion photographer and Speaker 2 (3:17) her Speaker 1 (3:17) present as this hard-bitten war correspondent. Because actually, if you look at this photograph through a slightly squinted eye, Speaker 2 (3:22) it's Speaker 1 (3:23) almost like a fashion photograph. I know you mentioned Bernini, but it's almost like a beautiful young woman reclines. on a sofa. It's only when you look closely, it's only when you know the context that you realise this is a Nazi who has taken her own life before the Americans take over. It's a fascinating image and it's so ambivalent, don't you think? I think that's part of the strength of it. She's showing that Nazis are not just monsters, they can also be beautiful young girls who are members of the Red Cross. Speaker 2 (3:50) I think as well, I mean, we started the last episode with probably her most famous image, which is that series of constructed self-portraits in which she appears in a bathtub, which was Hitler's bathtub in his private apartment in Munich. And this predates that by just a few days. We're now approaching that part of the story, which is Lee Miller, as you say, war journalist, war correspondent. Speaker 2 (4:16) For some listeners, it might feel like quite an abrupt turn, right? Because, I mean, maybe it's worth just briefly recapping where we've got to in the story. She's born in New York State in Poughkeepsie. Poughkeepsie. Poughkeepsie, which you visited and know well. Love Poughkeepsie. She has this, her father is a very big figure in her life, engineer, amateur photographer. She credits him with really introducing her to the medium of photography. He creates a series of portraits of her when she's a young girl and a young woman, some of which are nude and quite controversial in a way, which we touched on last time. Speaker 2 (4:55) spends time in Paris, then New York, where she has this accidental meeting with Condé Nast. She becomes a model, famous socialite, fashion model in the pages of Condé Nast magazine Vogue. She then goes back to Paris and she's a surrealist muse and she's having this great love affair with Man Ray. Then she goes back to New York, she has her commercial photography studio, but then, weirdly, she's suddenly in Egypt. She's in Cairo for a few years. Speaker 1 (5:17) It's just Speaker 2 (5:17) an incredible Speaker 1 (5:18) life, isn't it? Speaker 2 (5:18) I mean, it is actually dizzying when you start listing everything. And I think where we ended last time is we were describing those years in Egypt where she has this really, this resurgence of creativity in terms of her own fine art practice as a photographer. And towards the end of the 30s, that's when she creates that stunning image, a portrait of space. Oh, so good. Where you could see that Egyptian landscape through, what is it, like a ripped mosquito net. And then there was the summer of love in... Cornwall, then Mugin in the south of France, where she's painted by Picasso. And that's really where we got to. But I think you had pointed out that towards the end of the 30s, she'd been married to this Egyptian businessman. She falls in love with an Englishman, Roland Penrose. And that chapter of her story, which is the beginnings of how she becomes a war journalist, is where we're starting now. So this is the second and final part of our mini-series about the life and work of the American photographer and artist and, I say as a journalist, journalist, Lee Miller. Speaker 1 (6:29) So Alistair, with my historian hat on, just a little bit of context. While Lee Miller had been enjoying herself through the 1930s, Europe had been sliding quietly but unstoppably into war. So while she's photographing the great and the good in uptown New York in 1933, Hitler comes to power in Germany. And in September 1939, when she's on this wonderful holiday in France with Roland Penrose, Germany invades. Poland. Speaker 2 (6:57) And Speaker 1 (6:57) this really is the beginning of the Second World War. The European powers have been trying very, very hard to avert and to avoid war. But the invasion of Poland really is the straw that breaks the camel's back. And two days later, on the 3rd of September 1939, Britain and France declare war on Germany. And this is the beginning of the Second World War. This is the beginning of a war that will last. Six years, it will kill tens of millions of people, it will leave Europe in ruins, but it will also be transformative for the career of Lee Miller. And part of that transformation Speaker 2 (7:30) comes about from her decisions in her personal life, because after she meets this Englishman, Roland Penrose, who is a painter and a curator and a collector and intellectual left-wing intelligence here in London, Britain's... one of premier surrealists in Britain, she has to make a decision ultimately. She goes back to her husband in Egypt, but then whilst everything you're describing is brewing, she's still in touch with Roland Penrose. There are these love letters that go between them. And eventually, as you have the outbreak of war, as she's had this holiday subsequently in 1939 in France with Roland Penrose, she decides that she's going to go and live with him. And so they catch, I think, is it the last boat, one of the last boats out of, interestingly, the port city in Brittany in France of San Marlo. Oh, I didn't... Yeah, well, it becomes relevant later. It does, it's very much so, wow. It's Speaker 1 (8:22) a Speaker 2 (8:22) strange serendipity and she goes back to England and arrives there in the autumn when war has been declared and she's now living with Roland Penrose in his home in Hampstead at 21 Downshire Hill. Speaker 1 (8:35) One little thing, I don't know if you were going to bring this up, but when she arrives at the house in Hampstead, there is a letter on the doormat. It's a letter addressed to Lee Miller from the US Embassy that says, you've got to get out of Britain. It's no longer safe. You need to leave Britain and return to the USA. So what does she do? She tears the letter up. She ignores it. Of course she does. She ignores it because Lee Miller is someone who is addicted to danger. Also, she loves, I mean, you really get the impression that this is a... proper romance, Speaker 2 (9:04) a real love affair. You know, she's deeply in love with Roland Penrose. So presumably there is that sense of being, you know, where the action is. But also she doesn't want to be split by an ocean. She's just spent some time away from Roland Penrose while she was in Egypt. Speaker 1 (9:17) Yeah, I think she does adore him. But she also adores the thrill, the excitement of war. There's a particular moment for those people who haven't been to London. Hampstead is quite high up. You can look down over the city from Hampstead. And one evening, they're standing at the top of the hill. And you can see the buildings are in flames. The air raid sirens are going. The searchlights are roving across the sky. And she grabs his arm and she looks at him and smiles and says, darling, isn't this exciting? So she is thrilled and excited by this extraordinary thing that is taking place. And she very quickly... tries to get to work, Speaker 2 (9:52) doesn't she? Well, she does. And bear in mind that she didn't really need to work while she was in Egypt. So she is making her own photographs, which are, of course, some of them quite great artworks. But now she needs, she wants to find a job again. She has this history of having been a successful fashion photographer, commercial photographer. And quite soon after the war is declared, well, you have this odd initial period, which is known as the Phony War. don't you? Where seemingly nothing much actually is happening in terms of the great threat that was imminent for London. This is sort of pre the Blitz. But quite soon in that period, she's approaching British Vogue, which has the brilliant nickname of Brogue, which is possibly my favourite detail in the Lee Miller literature. And she's presenting herself to that magazine. And because a lot of people who work for the magazine are taken off their day-to-day duties in a either, well, they're involved in the war effort in some way, perhaps an opportunity opens up for her. Oh, Speaker 1 (10:53) this is a really important point. I mean, and I think it's worth a little bit of wider context that one of the great social transformations that is brought about by the Second World War is an incredible new range of professional opportunities for women in various different sectors for the simple reason that loads of men are away. And so they need people to take on their jobs. And this opportunity is also one that becomes open to Lee Miller because the great Vogue photographers at the time, people like Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson, they're doing work with the war effort. And so an opportunity does arise. And also, Alastair, the editor of Brogue is an incredible woman. She's a great figure. Audrey Withers. That's her name, Audrey Withers, who obviously partly perhaps wants to support women, but also feels very strongly that Vogue cannot ignore the war. It's got to really try to deal with the reality that is facing it. Speaker 2 (11:44) I think there's an editorial in which the magazine is kind of typical of the time, which was pointed out by this great Tate exhibition recently that was held at Tate Britain about Lee Millard, in which Vogue describes this business of beauty as becoming a duty. And actually for the government, for the British government, Vogue has a role to play and for the Ministry of Information. Initially, they're wanting women to spend. to sustain the economy. And so the magazine's content is trying to encourage that. But then obviously all sorts of rationing comes in. Ultimately, there's going to be food rationing. There's also paper rationing quite early on. So the magazine goes down to monthly. I think it was fortnightly. And one of the things is also clothing rationing. And so suddenly there's a whole new aesthetic, which is more make, do and mend. And so Vogue's creative teams, including Lee Miller, when she's working after she is now working for them, are trying to... further that message, if you like. And it's interesting because even Roland Penrose, he starts teaching camouflage to the Home Guard. And I mean, this is slightly jumping around, but there's a wonderful story of their time together in the war. Have you come across this one, which is possibly it was Elizabeth Arden, but a company come up with a green ointment that they say, if you put it on your face, it will camouflage your face. become invisible, as it were, through camouflage. And Roland Penrose, who's teaching camouflage to the Home Guard, decides that he will try and use this ointment and introduce it to the people he's teaching. And his vision for it is to create like a parody of an English tea party in a garden in which... Lee Miller reprises her role as a surrealist muse and strips naked, is covered with the ointment, and then photographs are taken of her. And Rowland's line about it is, my theory was that if this ointment could hide such eye-catching attractions as hers from the invading Hun, smaller and less seductive areas of skin would stand an even better chance of becoming invisible. And actually, I was just listening to something on the way, which he supposedly said after it was a great success, suddenly his lectures were much better attended. Right, OK. No surprise there. Speaker 1 (13:52) But what about Lee's own work? So she tries very early on, outbreak of war, to get this job with Vogue, to get commissioned by Vogue. They say no repeatedly, but eventually, through her classic Lee Miller persistence, she does get a role with Vogue. What do the early... war photographs by Lee Miller look like? Speaker 2 (14:12) So there's one picture which I think is fairly typical of her approach in this early phase of the war. It's now known as Fire Masks and it was taken at Downshire Hill, which is where she's living with Roland Penrose, and it... There are two models in it and they're sitting at the entrance to one of these air raid shelters. Now, supposedly Penrose had created a pastel pink, typically surrealist air raid shelter with a Barbara Hepworth sculpture at the entrance in the garden of Downshire Hill. And I think it's an amazing image because a bit like you said at the start with that image of the young German dead nurse, this reads... as a fashion picture, because you can sense that these are beautiful models and they look like they're wearing quite chic clothes. But they have these masks that were made of tin and rubber and would have been worn by air raid wardens, which give it a completely odd, unsettling, surreal quality. So I think a lot of her work, which, and there is a bleed because she's working. for specific commissions for Audrey Withers and others at Vogue. But she's also going around and experiencing the city during the Blitz, when the Luftwaffe is annihilating London, decimating London. And she takes lots of pictures. There's another one which is called Nonconformist Chapel. So this is an image in... that she takes in Camden in 1940, and you see the outside of a church, and it has a grand threshold with that architecture of a doorway with its lintel, its architraves, and the brick wall. And then seemingly spilling out of this threshold is this cascade, a torrent of broken bricks, masonry bits of building. It's clearly suffered bomb damage. Speaker 2 (15:59) You know, I think here, too, a bit like with the other image, you see a sense of Lee Miller's wit as a photographer. It is a nonconformist chapel because it's sort of spewing out its guts, if you like, to the viewer. And there's just a small sort of aside as well that, you know, a lot of photographs that were taken at this time, they were having to go via the sensors. And there's this curious quirk that the sensors thought if you're depicting imagery of the Blitz, it can only really show about 50 percent. rubble or damage. And I think Nonconformist Chapel is a good example of that. Because... She gets around the censorship in a way. It's implied that through that threshold, a bit like with a portrait space, you're taken somewhere else to another realm through a threshold. There's just loads more. It's just completely chock Speaker 1 (16:42) -a-block with all of this damage beyond. There's a sense, I wonder what you think about this, Alistair, but we talked in the previous episode about Lee Miller as a surrealist. Yeah. She's in Paris, she's working with Man Ray, she's photographing severed breasts. She's really at the heart of the