{"id":8013,"date":"2017-01-06T16:58:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T16:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=8013"},"modified":"2019-11-14T22:16:39","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T22:16:39","slug":"lee-miller-challenging-convention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=8013","title":{"rendered":"Lee Miller, Challenging Convention"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From <\/span>Art Journal <\/span><\/em>75, no. 4 (Winter 2016)<\/span><\/h4>\n\n\n
\"Unknown<\/a>
Unknown photographer, Lee Miller in steel helmet specially designed for using a camera, Normandy, France 1944,<\/strong> black-and-white photograph (photograph \u00a9 The Penrose Collection, England 2016, all rights reserved, www.leemiller.co.uk)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War.<\/em><\/strong> Exhibition organized by Hilary Roberts. Imperial War Museum, London, October 15, 2015\u2013April 24, 2016<\/p>\n

Hilary Roberts, ed. Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em>.<\/strong> Exh. cat., with introduction by Antony Penrose. London: Thames and Hudson, 2015. 224 pp., 156 b\/w ills. $55<\/p>\n

Lee Miller.<\/strong> Exhibition organized by Walter Moser. Albertina Museum, Vienna, May 8\u2013August 16, 2015; as The Indestructible Lee Miller<\/em>, cocurated by Bonnie Clearwater, NSU Art Museum, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL, October 4, 2015\u2013February 14, 2016; and as Lee Miller\u2014Photographs<\/em>, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, March 19\u2013June 12, 2016<\/p>\n

Walter Moser and Klaus Albrecht Schr\u00f6der, eds. Lee Miller<\/em>.<\/strong> With texts in English and German by Anna Hanreich, Astrid Mahler, Elissa Mail\u00e4nder, Moser, and Ute Wrocklage, and visual essays by Anna Artaker and Tatiana Lecomte. Exh. cat. Vienna: Albertina, and Ostfildern: Hatje-Cantz Verlag, 2015. 160 pp., 6 color ills., 130 b\/w. $45, paper<\/p>\n

In the past year alone, photographs by Lee Miller have been featured in two large-scale, international exhibitions: Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em> (London) and Lee Miller<\/em> (Vienna, Berlin, and Fort Lauderdale). Both exhibitions argue that Miller\u2019s life and work were extraordinary, an approach which is very often the emphasis of monographic shows featuring the photographer. Frequently Miller\u2019s personal life\u2014specifically certain experiences which could have negatively influenced her point of view\u2014is highlighted and can overshadow the reception of her image-making in the context of the photographic medium and its history. As viewers, curators, and art historians, we cannot determine or comprehend the impact of Miller\u2019s psyche on her work, and frankly, though it may embellish an already captivating biography, the exercise is ultimately unproductive. One can, however, both identify the characteristics of Miller\u2019s practice that almost directly communicate Surrealist tenets or reference the history of photography, and observe Miller\u2019s unique compositional framing of wartime scenes that were entirely lacking an art-historical language or audience. In other words, it is Miller\u2019s photographs which should remain in focus. Rife with complexities, Miller\u2019s almost contradictory point of view consists of a close proximity to her subjects, both living and dead, and a unique type of cool, psychological distance.<\/p>\n

\"Hilary<\/a>
Hilary Roberts, ed., Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That said, a conversation with Hilary Roberts, curator of Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em>, revealed that the exhibition attempts to recast our vision of women\u2019s contributions to the Second World War effort and pay tribute to Miller\u2019s unique agility and perseverance during such turbulent world events. Viewers are encouraged to accept the idea of \u201cwar as an evolution\u201d and discover the many ways in which women were instrumental in creating the stability necessary for constant change. Undoubtedly, the concept is an important one; the exhibition, however, looks only through Miller\u2019s lens rather than expanding into the\u2014albeit diminutive \u2014spectrum of female war-correspondent photographers. For this reason, A Woman\u2019s War<\/em> appears to have been argued inversely: if Miller, then Women. A more productive strategy might read: if Women, then Miller. To attempt to understand the wartime experiences of all women, both the extraordinary and ordinary, through the lens of Miller is an ambitious objective that cannot help but fall short. If Miller is designated as the case study at hand, she is truly a unique one.<\/p>\n

Mounted on an upper level of the recently glamorized Imperial War Museum in London, Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em> welcomes visitors with an oversize, three-dimensional title piece in anodized steel. Overhead lighting beams down, dramatizing each letter with intense, shadowed underscoring. Roberts explains that the title evokes Miller\u2019s commitment to the experiences of women during the Second World War. In 1942, only one year after the introduction of female conscription in Great Britain, Miller obtained official US military accreditation as a war correspondent for Cond\u00e9 Nast press.1<\/a><\/sup> Among her first projects was documenting the activities of both the Women\u2019s Voluntary Service and the Women\u2019s Royal Naval Service; Roberts notes, however, that the political atmosphere of the mid-twentieth century did not allow for much flexibility in Miller\u2019s role. She was often assigned photo stories believed relevant to the primarily female readerships of British and American Vogue<\/em>. \u201cFashion for Factories,\u201d an article on how to make industrial looks more appealing for women new to the work of mass production, features Miller\u2019s images modeling factory uniforms and masks. Despite the article\u2019s already curious editorial pitch, Miller\u2019s photographs show a clear connection to Surrealist tropes: the bizarre marriage of fashion and war leading to protective eyewear as the latest fashion accessory. Frequently making such references to Surrealism, Miller\u2019s photographs are populated with mannequins, disembodied limbs, and graphic violence, in addition to her general penchant for decontextualization.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A slide show follows the title piece, displaying somewhat unrelated but diverse subjects captured by Miller: personal photos from vacations with fellow Surrealists, fashion shoots produced in the rubble of the London Blitz, and Miller in uniform at Vogue<\/em>\u2019s London studio. Painted portraits of the photographer by Pablo Picasso and Roland Penrose (Miller\u2019s second husband) flank the large lightbox, emphasizing this early\u2014and perhaps as the exhibition begins to imply, foremost\u2014role assumed by Miller. Beyond the portraits, an exhibition label makes direct and detailed reference to Miller\u2019s childhood experience with sexual assault, strongly implies her father was a predatory figure, and prepares visitors to encounter varied manipulations of Miller by sundry male figures throughout the course of her life. Such biographical details, unfortunately, set the tone of the exhibition and mark the point from which the conceptual framework\u2014women\u2019s experiences during wartime\u2014begins to fray. The exhibition that follows is organized chronologically with sections focusing on \u201cWomen before the Second World War,\u201d \u201cWomen in Wartime Britain, 1939\u201344,\u201d \u201cWomen in Wartime Europe, 1944\u201345,\u201d and \u201cWomen and the Aftermath of War.\u201d <\/p>\n

Attempting to boost morale despite the encroaching realities of war, Miller worked with Vogue<\/em> UK to continue producing fashion features during wartime. Steeped in the visual tropes of Surrealism, Miller\u2019s photographic tactics hardly change when confronted with destruction, injury, death, and eventually, the atrocities of Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/a>
Lee Miller, Woman accused of collaborating with the Germans, Rennes, France, 1944<\/em>,<\/strong> black-and-white photograph (photograph \u00a9 Lee Miller Archives England 2016, all rights reserved, www.leemiller.co.uk)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the feature essay in the exhibition catalogue, which includes an introduction by Miller\u2019s son, Antony Penrose, Roberts posits that given these circumstances, Miller often utilizes a \u201cfeminized language\u201d in order to appeal to Vogue<\/em>\u2019s mostly female readership (Roberts catalogue, 21). Conversely, I argue that Miller inserts highly visual language that communicates more as poetic than gendered. The majority of her wires to Audrey Withers, the social-advocacy-driven wartime editor-in-chief of Vogue<\/em> UK, feature no such \u201cfeminization.\u201d When faced with the horrors of a former Gestapo prison in Cologne and the liberations in spring 1945, Miller writes with urgency, citing Germans with \u201cfat-covered nerves\u201d who were deliberately overlooking the atrocities.2<\/a><\/sup> Miller\u2019s anger is palpable and her message is direct. She asks readers to recognize\u2014 rather to believe\u2014that the torture and murder of millions took place: a message not yet fully accepted as truth in the United States. Miller, unafraid, calls Germans \u201cschizophrenics,\u201d \u201caudacious\u201d, \u201cthe enemy,\u201d \u201cslimy,\u201d and \u201crepugnant,\u201d and warns readers to be wary of differentiating between the elite SS members and the \u201cnormal\u201d German citizens who \u201cignored the activities of their lovers and spouses and sons.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Miller\u2019s writing is mirrored by the extreme proximity found in her images, which often insert her directly into the scene. Miller\u2019s step-by-step approach, as revealed by her contact sheets, differed from most other war correspondents and photo-journalists during wartime. According to friend, collaborator, and Life<\/em> magazine photojournalist David E. Scherman, when faced with train cars filled with the dead at Dachau, Miller climbed inside the container in order to record the reactions of US Army soldiers. Miller crops her images to graphic squares, decontextualizes scenes, and lacks \u201ccommon subjects\u201d or perspectives which were often the focus for other war photographers. Specifically, Margaret Bourke-White, already a well-known photographer at the time and also working as a war correspondent, gained access to many of the same locations within hours of Miller. When we compare both photographers\u2019 contact sheets with those of Scherman, Miller\u2019s point-of-view remains uniquely close to her subjects. Although it is unclear whether or not Miller completely staged any of her wartime images by moving objects, we do know that Miller occasionally intervened by posing her subjects. In the only well-documented case of staging, Miller herself returns to the role of model with the help of Scherman. Sitting nude in Hitler\u2019s Munich-residence bathtub, Miller\u2019s combat boots sit before her, soiling the bathmat with the dirt and ashes of Dachau. The photographers constructed the scene together, propping Heinrich Hoffmann\u2019s iconic photographic portrait of Hitler on one side of the bathroom and Rudolf Kaesbach\u2019s classical nude sculpture on the other. The image was in fact published in \u201cHitleriana,\u201d a story for the July 1945 issue of Vogue<\/em> UK. It resurfaced during the 1990s, however, when Antony Penrose found boxes of his mother\u2019s negatives and reintroduced her wartime work into circulation. Roberts communicated that she did not want this image, arguably Miller\u2019s best-remembered photograph today, to overshadow the photographer\u2019s other work. Yet its digital reprint is noticeably larger than most others presented in the exhibition.<\/p>\n

\"Walter<\/a>
Walter Moser and Klaus Albrecht Schr\u00f6der, eds., Lee Miller<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em> also presents a selection of ephemera owned by Miller\u2014her uniform, brass knuckles, identification cards, and even loot from Eva Braun\u2019s Munich apartment\u2014which form the perimeter of the show. These additions significantly complement the narrative throughout the exhibition, add to the biographical focus, and interestingly loosen the often-felt repetitiveness of photographic exhibitions by enlivening the images. This could also be the impetus behind Roberts\u2019s decision to sporadically paint selected walls in vibrant hues, an homage to Miller and Roland Penrose\u2019s Farley Farm house that stands in contrast to the drab colors on other walls, which are in turn meant to mimic those of female US war correspondent uniforms. Midway through the show, a darkened cinema space loops newsreels featuring Miller and her Vogue<\/em> colleagues, as well as an interview with Scherman from the 1985 Channel 4 documentary The Lives of Lee Miller<\/em>. The Imperial War Museum exhibition also includes some examples of images submitted by Miller to Vogue<\/em> but disallowed from publication. Presented with the British Ministry of Information\u2019s original marginalia in red and blue ink, they are the only vintage prints included in the show. The decision to produce modern digital reprints of Miller\u2019s negatives supports an interest in creating a consistent aesthetic; however, their presentation leaves much to be desired. Although Miller was not particularly known for her printing process and often hired assistants for darkroom work, there is something to be said about seeing prints from the period of production, despite their being small and incongruous.<\/p>\n

In sharp contrast, Lee Miller<\/em>, curated by Walter Moser and as mounted at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, features almost exclusively vintage prints in a highly diverse, yet perhaps more traditionally presented photography show. Featuring over five decades of Miller\u2019s work through one hundred objects, the exhibition focuses on Miller\u2019s learned \u201cSurrealist visual idiom,\u201d her ongoing dialogue\/collaboration with Man Ray, and her development into a war correspondent (foreword to Moser and Schr\u00f6der, 7). Also organized chronologically, the exhibition is installed within multiple open-bay galleries and displays some archival materials such as letters between her and Roland Penrose, as well as Miller\u2019s photo stories in various issues of both British and American Vogue<\/em>. <\/p>\n

The catalogue features an essay by Astrid Mahler, \u201cFormative Years: Lee Miller and Surrealism,\u201d which draws the reader\u2019s attention to significant arguments made on behalf of Miller\u2019s production, autonomy, and complexity as an image-maker. Mahler introduces Whitney Chadwick\u2019s argument that Miller was the first woman involved in the Surrealist movement \u201cto seek an aesthetic, rather than a personal identity\u201d (Moser and Schr\u00f6der, 11),4<\/a><\/sup> as well as Amy J. Lyford\u2019s questioning of the Miller literature\u2019s consistent return to Man Ray and his photographs of her, when attention should remain on the images taken by Miller.5<\/a><\/sup> Mahler argues that \u201cthe common \u2018muse-model-lover\u2019 scheme into which the partners of famous artists are generally placed is not appropriate for Miller\u201d and the exhibition intentionally reflects this core issue (Moser and Schr\u00f6der, 11). As such, Neck<\/em> (1930), an image commonly credited\u2014concept, staging, and production\u2014only to Man Ray, is the first image on display when one enters the exhibition. The accompanying label expounds Mahler\u2019s argument, stating that Miller\u2019s active role in the creation of this image suggests not just that it is collaborative in nature, but that Miller may have produced it autonomously.<\/p>\n

In fact, Miller\u2019s images often grappled with subject matter deemed more taboo than the work of Man Ray; she thus pushed the Surrealist envelope just as much, if not more than her male counterparts. Taken during a commissioned visit to a hospital, Severed Breast from Radical Surgery in a Place Setting<\/em> (ca. 1930) portrays a disembodied female breast in the center of a stark, white dinner plate. Miller stages the image with a placemat and the proper silverware setting, perhaps presenting viewers with a graphic commentary on the treatment of female bodies in Surrealist art practice. This is undoubtedly a radical gesture, and Mahler posits further that the breast voids the sexualized male gaze, evidencing that Miller\u2019s independence and abilities extend even further beyond the Surrealist circle.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/a>
Lee Miller with David E. Scherman, Lee Miller in Hitler\u00b4s Bathtub, Munich, Germany, 1945<\/em>,<\/strong> black-and-white photograph (photograph \u00a9 Lee Miller Archives England 2016, all rights reserved, www.leemiller.co.uk)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following the narrative line of the show, Anna Hanreich\u2019s essay for the Lee Miller<\/em> catalogue carefully profiles Miller\u2019s wartime photographic practice, also comparing her images to those of other female photographer war correspondents: Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Bonney, Bourke-White, Georgette M. (Dickey) Chapelle, and Toni Frissell. Such comparisons still support arguments of Miller\u2019s unmatched proximity and eye for bizarre compositions. In her essay on Miller\u2019s images from Buchenwald and Dachau, Ute Wrocklage, like Roberts, discusses the careful military censorship process, but also reveals that some of Miller\u2019s published images were in fact cropped by the editorial style team at Cond\u00e9 Nast. The most poignant example shows a group of five liberated prisoners, identified by their striped trousers, gazing at a pile of human bones. Vogue<\/em> USA determined that for an American public still wary of the veracity and extent of Nazi war crimes, Miller\u2019s image appeared too posed. As a result, they cropped the heads (and piercing eye contact) of the men, leaving only the discernable patterned uniform bottoms on view. Regardless, Wrocklage rightly notes the complexities of Miller\u2019s process in a side-by-side comparison to photographs by Scherman, who was with Miller in both camps.<\/p>\n

Miller and Scherman\u2019s awareness of the National Socialist use of ideology is again striking when the Berlin exhibition draws the viewer\u2019s attention to the series of photographs taken in Hitler\u2019s Munich apartment, as well as in Eva Braun\u2019s single-family home. Elissa Mail\u00e4nder\u2019s essay points to the photographers\u2019 calculated deconstruction of the Hitler myth, noting one curious example of Miller inviting Russian refugees into Braun\u2019s home. Miller photographs the women rummaging through Braun\u2019s makeup, applying it in front of her full-length vanity set. Not often featured in Miller exhibitions and possibly never shown before, the image\u2019s banality actually bears witness to the relative fragility of the cult of personality. In an act of defiance, Miller juxtaposes the domestic, private, and privileged space of Braun with the very real consequences of persecution and a small, residual triumph.<\/p>\n

Lee Miller<\/em> concludes with photographs of Vienna from one of Miller\u2019s final wartime reports, just weeks after the Third Reich\u2019s surrender. After fifty-three air raids and the eventual liberation by the Red Army, the occupied city lay in ruins. The exhibition displays photographs of bomb damage, hospitalized children, and black-market transactions of forbidden or rare goods. Although the official narrative portrayed Austria as a victim\u2014in Miller\u2019s words \u201cliberated instead of conquered\u201d\u2014she is insistent in letters to Roland Penrose that the Austrians are just as responsible as Germans (Miller quoted in Moser and Schr\u00f6der, 137).6<\/a><\/sup> Exhibition curator Moser argues that Miller\u2019s images are \u201cvisual admonishments\u201d of this state myth, citing the political lucidity of her unpublished writings as significant connective tissue for interpreting her seemingly more mundane images (Moser and Schr\u00f6der, 74). Viewers leave the exhibition with a sense of Miller\u2019s development and sustained autonomy, that her competence and skill extend beyond the role of muse, student, or model. This final gallery of images from Vienna only affirms Miller\u2019s evolution from a \u201cdesire to agitate\u201d to a hardened, post-conflict maturity (foreword to Moser and Schr\u00f6der, 7).<\/p>\n

Similarly, Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em> reveals that Miller\u2019s images are complex not because she was documenting women\u2019s wartime contributions\u2014this was her assignment\u2014but rather due to her ability to bypass (some of) the boundaries of her gender role, a remarkable feat for this period. Roberts enhances this achievement with quotations by Miller posted throughout the journey-like galleries: Miller\u2019s \u201cvisions of gender\u201d reading as equality, freedom, and the ability to create one\u2019s own security. Unfortunately, we are soon catapulted back into the reality that the roles Miller began to transcend still possess certain and enduring rigidities. Viewers are faced with a final, monumental lightbox image of Miller in her kitchen and then immediately confronted with the exhibition gift shop\u2019s kitschy byproducts of museum-survival-capitalism: a compact mirror, a manicure set, jewelry.<\/p>\n

\n

Lauren Richman<\/strong>, a PhD candidate in the department of art history at Southern Methodist University, is currently conducting dissertation research in Berlin. Her research examines the photographic medium as integral to the multilayered, postwar \u201creconstruction\u201d of German cultural and national identity in Cold War\u2013divided Berlin.<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
  1. Great Britain established female conscription in 1941: unmarried women in their twenties could be sent to join the police or fire service, or to noncombatant roles in the armed forces. Other women up to the age of forty were required to register and could be directed to factories. The United States did not draft women during WWII; as a US citizen, Miller was not subject to conscription. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>
  2. Lee Miller, \u201cGermans Are Like This,\u201d Vogue<\/em> USA, June 1, 1945, 102. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>
  3. Ibid. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>
  4. Whitney Chadwick, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement<\/em> (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 7, 38. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>
  5. See Amy J. Lyford, \u201cLee Miller\u2019s Photographic Impersonations 1930-1945: Conversing with Surrealism,\u201d History of Photography<\/em> 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1994): 230-41. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>
  6. See also Katharina Menzel-Ahr, Lee Miller: Kriegskorrespondentin f\u00fcr Vogue; Fotografien aus Deutschland 1945<\/em> (Marburg: Jonas, 2005), 74. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Lauren Richman<\/p>\n

    Lauren Richman reviews Hilary Roberts, ed., Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em>, and the exhibition Lee Miller: A Woman\u2019s War<\/em>, and Walter Moser and Klaus Albrecht Schr\u00f6der, eds., Lee Miller<\/em>, and the exhibition Lee Miller<\/em>, aka Lee Miller\u2014Photographs<\/em> and The Indestructible Lee Miller<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kia_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-art-journal",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}