ARTSNATIONAL Coffs Coast recent speaker Antony Penrose delivered one of the organisation’s most-attended talks, Lee Miller’s War.
More than 190 people sat down at St John Paul College Theatre in October to hear the subject’s son, Antony, describe his mother’s outstanding life in photography.
Born to Ms Miller and British surrealist painter, Roland Penrose, Antony Penrose only learned of the extent of Miller’s photographic output and status after her death in 1997.
He told the audience that it was a ‘fluke’ discovery.
Lee Miller was born in upstate New York.
Her father Theodore was a successful engineer and passionate amateur photographer who gave her an early introduction to the craft.
Creative and rebellious, after being expelled from school in 1922, Miller moved to Paris in 1925, aged 18, to study lighting, costume, and theatre design at the Ladislas Medgyes’ School of Stagecraft.
She returned to New York in 1926 to continue her theatre studies, and later in life, drawing and painting.
Acquiring a place in the arty set, she moved to Paris, sought out American photographer extraordinaire, Man Ray, became his lover and collaborator, and was a respected artist in the Surrealist set: Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Paul Éluard, Dora Maar and, fatefully, British Surrealist painter, Roland Penrose.
By 1943 Miller had become an accredited war correspondent for Vogue, and the following year she teamed up with Life photojournalist David E. Scherman.
Together they followed the 83rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army as it advanced on the front lines.
“Miller became the first female photojournalist to do so,” Penrose said.
“She photographed the Liberation of Paris, the battle of Saint-Malo, field hospitals in Normandy, and the liberation of both the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps.
“Her photographs, some of the first photographic evidence of the Holocaust, were a horrifying glimpse of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the camps.”
Penrose crafted a powerful and absorbing survey of Lee Miller’s life and work for his Coffs Coast audience.
It was confronting and heartbreaking to witness the human devastation wrought by the Nazi regime.
Perhaps the most famous photograph from this time is Lee Miller photographed by David E. Scherman sitting in a tub in Adolf Hitler’s private apartment, Munich, 1945.
“They hadn’t had a bath for six weeks,” Penrose explained.
“They arrived in Munich after the Nazis had fled but before confirmation of Hitler’s death.
“The apartment had been vacated and they went to investigate.
“It still had hot water and Lee couldn’t resist.”
She had Scherman snap the shot, the now-famous photograph of washing herself in Hitler’s bathtub, her muddy boots on the bathmat.
In 1945 Miller travelled throughout eastern Europe to see and photograph the devastating aftermath of the war.
She found it hard to settle down and it wasn’t until Roland Penrose said he would leave her that she returned to London to rekindle the relationship and the pair married.
Miller was 40 when she had her son, Antony, and continued working for some years in London before they bought Farley Farm in East Sussex.
It was an enclave for artists of all kinds, including regular visits from Picasso, who painted Lee six times.
She abandoned photography and became a celebrity cook.
She never talked about her war experiences, leading Penrose to conclude that she had profound post-traumatic stress disorder.
The surprise twist in this story occurred after her death in 1977.
Antony Penrose’s wife uncovered a stash of 60,000 photographic negatives in the attic of Farley House.
The discovery transformed Penrose’s life.
Farley House continues to be a site of artistic and Surrealist interest, celebrating 75 years in 2024.
It is now run as a foundation and a gallery by Antony Penrose and his daughter, Ami Bouhassane.
Lee Miller’s War was sponsored by Bryant McKinnon Lawyers.
ArtsNational Coffs Coast and Coffs Harbour Music Society present their end-of-year events together on Sunday 22 November for Spring: Creatures & Concertos and Simon Tedeschi in concert.
By Andrea FERRARI
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