03-05-2020, 06:38 PM
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BBC iPlayer - Lee Miller - A Life on the Front Line
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...the-front-line
This film celebrates a subject who defied anyone who tried to pin her down, put her on a pedestal or pigeonhole her in any way. It tells the story of a trailblazer, often at odds with the morality of the day, who refused to be subjugated by the dominant male figures around her.
Lee's father took nude photos of her and (possibly) "enjoyed" her. Whether he did the latter or not, she never had a problem thereafter with getting naked and having sex with men to further her "careers" - the documentary is littered with nude photos of her while her relationships with Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue, surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray, Egyptian businessman and engineer Aziz Eloui Bey are examined.
At the outbreak of World War II, Lee embarked on a new career in photojournalism as the official war photographer for Vogue, documenting the London Blitz, later teaming up with the American photographer David E. Scherman, a Life correspondent (and another lover). She traveled to France less than a month after D-Day and recorded the first use of napalm at the siege of St. Malo, as well as the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Alsace, and the horror of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
The experiences she photgraphed - those mentioned above and and many other atrocities of war - scarred her mind for life and she became “a useless drunk,” according to her son Antony Penrose, who only discovered his mother's past history as war correspondent, fashion photographer and model when he was tidying his mother's belongings after her death, in relative obscurity, in 1977.
As I said, not easy going and some appalling war scenes but Lee's life deserved my undivided attention - it was groundbreaking.
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