![]() I returned to Farleys House this year, to find that it’s now all about Miller. On the very same day, 30 April 1945, Hitler and Eva Braun died by suicide in their Berlin bunker. With Scherman they visited Hitler’s home in Munich, where he took the famous image of Miller bathing in Hitler’s bathtub, the bathmat muddied with the dirt of Dachau from her boots. She was among the first photographers to unsparingly document the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris and the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. Miller was among the first women photographers to unsparingly document the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris and the concentration campsīut among Miller’s most searing work was when Vogue commissioned her as a photojournalist during the Second World War-partnered with a male co-photographer, David Scherman. Man Ray and Miller worked so closely together that apparently some works she created are still credited to him. The story goes that she flipped on the light briefly when a mouse ran over her foot, so creating these images, part positive, part negative, as if lit from behind. She was also supposedly a “muse” to her lover Man Ray, who “invented” the solarisation process in 1929 while she was his assistant. Then there was Picasso, who painted her six times, but of course he always gets the limelight. There was Roland Penrose himself, a frankly rather mediocre painter but one of the few British Surrealists, noted more today as a curator and biographer of Picasso and Miró. ![]() Like so many women, her achievements were partly overshadowed by the men in her life-and there were quite a few-despite her career as a model and photographer. At that time, I must say, there was far less interest in Miller. I met their son, Antony Penrose, who still lives in the house. Ten years ago I visited Farleys House in East Sussex, the home of the artist and curator Roland Penrose and his wife Lee Miller (and their various lovers) for over 28 years. ![]()
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