'I Would Rather Take A Photograph Than Be One'

or how to be both....the Lee Miller Show in Paris

The big Lee Miller show that was at the Tate Britain last year has relocated to the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and is on display through August. It is incredibly comprehensive, and if you get a chance to go, I’d recommend going early, and not on the weekend, to beat the crowds as best you can. But definitely go.

Lee Miller is a familiar subject around these parts. Including how I have a parasocial relationship with her Paris apartment. (More on that in the Paris Guide I did for Saltete…if you are a paid subscriber see the link at the bottom of this email.)

I’ve taken both those pieces out from behind the paywall this week; if you are so inclined you can go back and give them a read. Joanna Scutts also has a great write-up of the show.

One of the benefits of seeing such a exhaustive show is experiencing the scope of an artist’s progression. This is also why I find the shows at Fondation Louis Vuitton to be compelling. When I saw the Rothko show there, I was struck by how derivative his early work was, something I’d never considered when encountering his most famous works piecemeal.

As noted, I know quite a lot about Miller and, for me anyway, there wasn’t necessarily new information in this show. What I found myself newly considering, however, was her hustle. And the ways in which she used her own body to further her art.

“I would rather take a photograph than be one,” Lee declared in her twenties, eager to get behind the camera. But of course her career is partially defined, and propelled, by her powerful ability to do both. Often at the same time. (See selection of photos below.) She is both the photo and the photographer. As a memoirist, this obviously appeals to me.

Miller has historically been cast, or dismissed, as the beautiful mistress. A side character not worthy of attention beyond her appearance. In recent years, the powers that be have done a 180 and given her the feminist treatment, most notably (and unfortunately) in the biopic Lee starring Kate Winslet, a movie I so desperately wanted to like, and decidedly did not.

Miller unquestionably deserves all the attention and accolades she is getting, but I always find myself frustrated at our continued inability to contend with the thorny aspects of a woman while at the same time celebrating her. This is a woman who understood her own beauty and was not afraid to wield it in extraordinary, and sometimes uncomfortable, ways.

She also hustled. My did she hustle. She hustled her way to Paris. She hustled Man Ray for a position. She used her own face to get work, and professionally reestablish herself, again and again. She refused to leave London when the war started, and, unable to get a wartime work visa (in the beginning), volunteered for Vogue in order to put her skills to use. She is not accidentally a success; her beauty was simply one tool she knew how to use, without apology or shame. Of course, we know this, but this retrospective really drove this reality home for me.

The photo of Miller in Hitler’s tub is one of the most famous taken of her (by fellow war correspondent David E. Scherman). In an intro to the book of photographs I purchased, Kate Winslet reflects how part of the power of that photograph for her is that it is “distinctly human. Imagine the relief of a hot wash after months in filthy clothes.” I had never considered this, and I love that Kate (who I love) did.

I didn’t realize until I saw the film Lee that Miller had gone to some lengths to stage that photo (proof that films don’t need to be good to be useful!): The portrait of Hitler on the tub; the nude bust; the boots on the bathmat, bearing the dirt from Dachau, which she had just visited…these were all Lee’s doing. In Lee’s (far less famous) matching photograph of Scherman in the tub, she tilted the camera up to include the shower nozzle above Scherman’s head. The book notes “He was Jewish. That morning in Dachau they had seen gas chambers disguised as shower baths.”

It was the show caption, however, that struck me this time:

“In unpublished passages of her manuscript, Miller observed that Hitler had ‘never really been alive for me until today. He’d been an evil-machine-monster all these years, until I…ate and slept in his house. He became less fabulous and therefore more terrible.’”

Emphasis mine, as it seems like a succinct way to also describe many elements of our current moment.

After the jump, some favorite shots Lee did of herself, with relevant captions (always read the captions!), and in one case, Ellie’s preferred translation. Some angles better than others…it was very crowded!