They are not 5 years old and, crouching in the darkness, seem delighted to be there. Same unreserved smile, same wide-open eyes, same oblique position towards the man who holds out his hand to them under the complicit gaze of their mother: the little twins in velvet hoods photographed by Lee Miller in Saint-Malo, in 1944, are similar in joy and gestures. A touching mimicry that makes you forget the disorder around, the shreds clinging to the brambles, the debris on the earthy ground, the wicker trunk as if thrown in a panic…
Sole reporter in besieged Saint-Malo
We expect drama and, very often, it is the grace that we find when browsing the exhibition “Saint-Malo under siege, August 1944”, hosted in the Victory Chapel, in the heart of the old town (1 ), which brings together 54 photos taken between August 13 and 17, 1944 by the American photographer, subject of a biopic in theaters since Wednesday October 9.
While the fire of the last battles between the Allied troops and the German army crackles, entrenched in the fortress of the city of Alet, Lee Miller, until then experienced in portraits and fashion photos (2), is the only one report on site. A situation that is all the more exceptional as women are prohibited from entering combat zones. She was nevertheless authorized to enter Saint-Malo by the Information Service of the American army, which had rather quickly assessed the city as pacified. He expects her to report on the work of the Civil Affairs Bureau, which helps residents. The British edition of the magazine Vogue published it in October 1944.
This context partly explains the attention paid by the photographer to the sidelines of the clashes. Here, an elegant hotelier, hair pulled up behind a counter where a helmet sits, gives us a slightly amused look while in the foreground, a GI gives us his look under dark glasses. There, also elegant in front of walls decorated with Breton plates, two women bend over documents handed out by a soldier while a third handles clothes in an open suitcase. Further on, children in short pants, gathered around a jeep, stretch their arms towards the driver’s load as if towards Santa’s sack.
Napalm bombing photos censored
The liberation of Saint-Malo has not yet taken place but it seems certain. The source of relief for the inhabitants and the soldiers alike, which Lee Miller’s lens captures with great delicacy. It comes from a gesture, an attitude, the expression of a face. An atmosphere of the end of the fight has set in, as in this photo showing a bunch of soldiers overturned on the cobblestones from which escapes, in an almost rectilinear extension evoking a composition, a string of ammunition.
Her concern for sensitive embodiment, which she reserves for civilians as well as allied troops and German prisoners, does not deprive Lee Miller of a frank view of the war. The most powerful proof lies in his photos of the napalm bombings of the city of Alet by the American air force. Censored by the army, they will not be published.
It is the first step in a journey along the path of violence which will take the photographer to Luxembourg and Alsace, to the battlefield, and to the camps of Buchenwald and Dachau, whose liberation she will cover. Traumatized, Lee Miller remained suffering from depression against which she fought until her death in 1977. Regarding her entry into Saint-Malo, she related her feelings in Vogue : “The only photographer for miles around, I now had my personal war. » A war that possessed her forever.
(2) See Lee Miller Photographspar Antony Penrose, Delpire and Co, 144 p., 37 €.