Cleaning up in Hitler's bathtub: a snapshot of Lee Miller

Here's another strong candidate for biopic movie treatment, and one could start anywhere. What a life! Lee Miller (April 23, 1907-July 27, 1977) managed to work among crazed and feverish artists in the 1920s and 1930s and as a war correspondent during the Second World War -- and still outlived such later-starting luminaries as Anne Sexton and Diane Arbus. Though her life was every bit as brilliant, unconventional, and dangerous as theirs, she must have had a stronger survival instinct -- or better luck.

In her twenties, she set off for Europe, modeled for Vogue, and plugged into the Surrealist movement, electrifying many of its key artists with her intelligence and striking good looks. She took up with Man Ray for about three years before going independent.

I recall thinking how cool Miller was in a documentary film of the period -- despite Man Ray's maniacal attempts to control her. There's something to the feminist charge that Man Ray seemed to enjoy creating violent images of women; indeed, women sometimes appear in his pictures as lacking certain body parts. Creepy, if aesthetically striking -- not unlike David Lynch's later recurrent visions. But let's make it clear: despite Man Ray's attempts to subdue her, Lee Miller was an exceptionally good photographer on her own, and will certainly be raised in stature over time.

Two recent books explore her life and work, and I recommend them both:

Richard Calvocoressi, Lee Miller: Portraits from a Life (New York:
Thames & Hudson, Inc., 2002)

Carolyn Burke, Lee Miller: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)

Miller split from Man Ray in 1932 and escaped to Manhattan; she married Aziz Eloui Bey, a wealthy Egyptian, in 1934 and left him in 1939. As the war loomed, she moved to London and lived in an open relationship with English art historian and poet-painter Roland Penrose, who agreed to let David Scherman, another boyfriend, live with them, too. Technically, she remained married to Bey until 1947.

Under contract with Vogue, Miller photographed life in England during the Blitz; then became war correspondent for Life and was on hand for the liberation of Paris and subsequent liberation of Nazi concentration camps. Scherman was with her when she took a bath in one of Hitler's bathtubs in Munich on April 30, 1945 -- the very day of Hitler's suicide in Berlin. A picture Scherman snapped of her in the tub adorns the back cover of Carolyn Burke's biography.

After the war, soon after legally divorcing her first husband, Miller married Roland Penrose and had a son with him in her early forties. She continued her influential career in photography through the 1960s.

Miller's photographs -- the ones I've seen -- concentrate on people and their faces. Shots of Nazis who've committed suicide near the end of the war are horrifyingly effective. Her self-portraits are lovely, and her portraits of artists as varied as Picasso, Bob Hope, and Dylan Thomas (leaning back on a chair, cigarette in hand) are excellent. Her wartime series include many incisive shots of "common people" in various contexts.

Remember Lee Miller! And adieu for now. . . . .