A piece of green countryside in south-east Englandwelcome to Farley House, a former farmhouse where Lee Miller and her husband, the British painter Roland Penrose, settled in 1949, far from the turpitudes of the world, with their son Antony. A son who, shortly after the death of his mother in 1977, will make a discovery with his wife Suzanna that will turn his life upside down, in the attic of the house. “I was sitting on the steps, right there.” says Antony Penrose, “and Suzanna, who was looking for photos of me as a baby, came in through the door here. There was a huge pile of boxes, she opened the first and came across the story of the siege of Saint Malo. I didn’t believe it! How could Lee have written such a thing? She never talked about it, she piled it all up there and started a new life!”
From this mother who had never told him anything and whom he considered above all to be an alcoholic, Antony then discovered an abundant photographic production. Sixty thousand negatives, more than twenty thousand prints and contact sheets, where all his desire to bear witness to this war shines through. Notably the photos of Saint-Malo under the bombs, in August 1944, which Lee’s Rolleiflex was the only one to capture. “British intelligence was wrong. explains Amy Bouhassane, granddaughter of Lee Miller and co-director of the Lee Miller archives, and adds “They didn’t think that Saint Malo was a combat zone, which meant that, for the first four days, she was alone there, before the other journalists arrived.”
Hitler’s apartment
Notably David Scherman, correspondent for the American magazine Life. Friend and lover, he was especially during the war, Lee Miller’s traveling companion. Together, in April 1945, they were the first to enter the newly liberated Buchenwald and Dachau camps. The one who trained her eye with the surrealists does not hesitate, despite the horror, to get as close as possible to her subject. “She was returning from Paris liberated where she had found some friends. Some like Man Ray had fled to the United States but many were still missing” contextualizes Amy Bouhassane, “so when she arrives in Buchenwald, she takes wide shots so that we can see the piles of bodies but she goes very close too. As if she were saying “are you my friend?”, “Would I recognize you if that were the case?”. At the time no one was talking about post-traumatic syndrome, like depression, it’s a mental illness, you never recover from it, that’s why she put everything in the attic.
His most famous photo dates from April 30, 1945. A few hours after their visit to Dachau, Lee Miller and David Schermann are in Munich, in Hitler’s apartment occupied by GIs. Three weeks since they took off their clothes, the smell of death no longer leaves them. Lee sees the bathroom, which has hot water. She undresses, jumps into the bathtub and strikes a pose, not without having installed an official portrait of Hitler near her and on the immaculate bath mat, clearly in evidence, her boots full of mud and dust from Dachau . Schermann presses the shutter button. “It’s a biography in one photo” s’amuse Antony Penrose, “totally staged since it was deliberate to wipe the dirt from his boots on the carpet, the equivalent of crushing his heel in Hilter’s face! This photo speaks to all of Lee’s resilience (having lived long enough to find himself there), all his determination, and all his way, as a surrealist artist, of using metaphor to tell a story”.
This photo will be published in lowercase by Vogue in Great Britain. Those from the camps, on the other hand, the magazine will refuse them. They will still end up appearing in the American edition of Vogue. The photographer will be left with a real wound from this episode. Just as she will keep until the end of her life a silver tray stolen in Munich, with the initials of Adolph Hitler, a vestige of a time when her courage and defiance had no limits.
To extend
- “Lee Miller”, by Ellen Kuras with Kate Winslet and Andy Samberg, in theaters Wednesday October 9.
- “Lee Miller: Saint Malo under siege”, exhibition at the Chapelle de la Victoire in Saint Malo until November 3.
