2023 Author: Jessica James | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 03:31
Next year there will be a biopic about Lee Miller, fashion model, fashion photographer, girlfriend of Pabro Picasso and Vogue war correspondent during the Second World War. The director will be Ellen Kuras, known for her film projects Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Coffee and Cigarettes, and I Shot Andy Warhol. The main role will be played by Kate Winslett, who, it seems, is especially successful at portraying women with an interesting and difficult fate. The BeautyHack.ru editors are already waiting for the premiere date and are confident that the picture will be popular all over the world. In the meantime, remember the facts about Lee Miller, confirming that she is worthy of being known to everyone.
Childhood and youth
1) Lee Miller's real name is Elizabeth Miller. She was born in 1907 in the suburbs of New York into the family of the engineer and amateur photographer Theodore Miller. At the age of seven, Li was staying at a friend's house and was raped and infected with a sexually transmitted disease. For several years Miller had to undergo treatment and go to a psychiatrist.
2) Lee loved her father very much, it was he who instilled in her a love of photography, taught her to pose and not be shy about the camera. However, some biographers considered their relationship not entirely healthy: from 8 to almost 20 years, Lee posed for her father in the nude.
3) In the 20s, Lee began to be invited to shoot in New York, many fashion photographers dreamed of working with her. Bikki Konkin writes in her book "Lee Miller in Fashion" that she had the ability to look in the frame not only beautiful, but also detached, inaccessible. The reason, in his opinion, could be associated with the terrible events of childhood and his father's photo sessions.
Not to worry and not think during filming is the main rule that Lee interpreted into the work of the model after psychotherapy.
4) At the age of 18, Miller went to Paris with her French teacher. However, instead of studying, the girl plunged into the bohemian life of the capital of France, but after seven months she returns home. After Paris, she could no longer live in her native suburb, so she finally left her parental home and went to conquer New York. Miller dreamed of being independent, finding her life's work.
Paris - New York
5) At 22, after the controversial Kotex advertisement, where Lee's pictures were used without her desire, the girl decides to move to Paris and study photography. The famous fashion photographer Man Ray, whom she met in New York, became her teacher. Lee was not only Ray's student, but also his model, muse. In photography, they first began to use the technique of solarization (the effect of "blown out" pictures). Also, some sources say that at the time, some of Man Ray's work actually belonged to Miller.
6) In France, Lee had another important acquaintance with Pablo Picasso. Their friendship lasted over 35 years, until his death in 1973. During this period, Lee took about 1000 pictures of Pablo, and he painted six of her portraits.
7) In 1932, at the age of 25, Miller returned to New York and opened his own photography studio. A year later, an exhibition of her works was held. The girl was predicted a brilliant career as a photographer and many more exhibitions. But life turned out differently.
Unexpected marriage and move to Egypt
8) Unexpectedly for everyone, Lee marries an Egyptian businessman Aziz Bey, closes a photo studio and moves to Cairo. Bikki Konkin in Lee Miller in Fashion suggests that the job did not bring her satisfaction. In addition, in those years, every girl, despite her career, had to be married.
9) However, a quiet family life away from home was not for Lee. Three years later, she leaves her husband and flies to Paris, which has always inspired her. On the very first evening, after checking into a hotel, Miller goes to a masquerade ball, where he meets the English surrealist artist Roland Penrose, whom she will then marry for the second time (in 1947!).
War correspondent for Vogue
10) Miller returns to work as a photographer. During World War II, she accepts Vogue's offers to become a war correspondent. But again she surprises the editors and the public: instead of neutral pictures of nurses or ordinary people, she sends to the publication frames from hospitals and the front, which cause tremors in the body.
"Lee Miller's first work as a military correspondent was the most impressive moment during the war, which we have published in our magazine," - writes about her work chief editor of British Vogue Audrey Withers.
11) In May 1945, Miller's world famous photo shoot (already as a model) appeared in British Vogue in the empty apartment of Adolf Hitler, which belonged to his mistress Eva Braun. In one picture, Lee is nude sitting in Hitler's bathtub, in the other, asleep on his couch. Photographer David Sherman was the author of the frames.
Life after the war
12) In 1947 Miller married longtime friend Roland Penrose, gave birth to a son, Anthony. At that time she was 40.
13) After the war, Lee finds it difficult to return to his usual life and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. As therapy, her husband pays for her six weeks of cooking classes in Paris that are changing her life. After graduating with honors, Miller is seriously into cooking. At one of the social events, she meets Bettina McNulty, the former editor of House and Garden, who becomes her best friend. Together, they come up with recipes and host dinner parties. Then Miller's son Anthony will say that the food saved his mother's life.
14) Lee Miller died of oncology, surrounded by family and friends in July 1977, she was 70 years old.
