Customer Reviews

Lee Miller: A Life

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How often do you read a biography that immerses you in the subject's vitality, essence, the dark side and the shining one? Carolyn Burke's astonishing biography of Lee Miller does just this. The reader dives easily into Miller's extraordinary life, from her childhood days in Poughkeepsie to her youth and adulthood as the muse and student of Surrealist artist Man Ray in Paris, to her own career as a model, photographer, and journalist, traveling far and wide for work and pleasure, always with her eye and mind attuned to landscape and nuance, the poetry of any given moment or situation.
Burke's empathic understanding of her subject's psyche allows her to focus on both the inner and outer workings that drove and created Lee Miller's talent, work, and life. There are accompanying photos throughout. This is a biography that reads like a riveting story, as chapter after chapter reveals a complex woman who lived in extraordinary times and was an important and potent contributor to those times. Burke achieves a beautiful balance of details, history, and conversations, so satisfying that you don't want it to stop.

Lee Miller is an enigma- though Carolyn Burke tells us a lot about her incredible life. As a biography, this is an honorable book. It is comprehensive and tells us about the fabulous life and career of a woman who participated in some of the most exciting times of the 20th century. From NY in the 20s to the Paris of Surrealists in the early 30s, back to NY and then to Egypt and the middle east. By this time Lee Miller was only 30 and some of her greatest adventures were ahead as Vogue's war correspondent and photographer during World War II in Europe. Her work continued during the immediate post war era and Ms. Burke's book illumniates some of the problems of post war Europe, which calls to mind some of the dislocation and problems currently in Iraq.
The portraits in the book make it clear that Lee Miller was a great beauty and the photos she took make it clear she was talented. Yet her precipitous decline after the war and her marriage to Roland Penrose is depressing and hard to figure out. As carefully as Ms. Burke's shares the facts of the book and even her occasional forays into trying to psychoanalyze Lee's motivation, I, like other reviewers found it hard to deciper who Lee really was. A great beauty, a madcap free spirit,a sexually free but emotionally closed woman, a deeply injured child of abuse, an alcohol abuser and indifferent mother to her only child could accurately describe her. Was she a victim of the post war attitudes towards women in the 1950s as she gave up her work to become an uber-housewife and chef in her English country home? It calls to my mind David Hare's play " Plenty" that portrayed the severe dislocation of a woman who had worked in France for the Resistance during WWII and then proceeded to destroy her life and injure those around her in the post war years. Ms. Burke suggest post traumatic stress as a source of Lee's post war problems. As one of the first people to photograph the concentration camps at the end of the war, Lee took breathtaking and disturbing images that affect us today- hard to imagine the affect of actually being there.
Most of the correspondence Ms.Burke quotes made it clear Lee Miller didn't share her deepest feelings with others in letters. Perhaps she didn't in person either- since her son only found out about her wartime work after her death when he discovered boxes of her negatives and photo work. She remains an enigma today. While this biography tells us about her, it can't unlock who she really was beneath the glamour and sadness of her life. I think there is a great movie here.

I was thinking about writing this review about halfway through the book, but felt bad about my thoughts towards the end of the book, since my main issue with this biography was what the author strived most to accomplish. Lee Miller led a fascinating life, and Carolyn Burke obviously enjoyed writing about it. But I realized that I never felt like I KNEW Miller, only was following her life. I was aware of what she was doing at each stage of her life, but not necessarily what drove her to do so, or what was going through her mind. I know Burke wanted to look at Lee Miller's life through Lee Miller's eyes, but I never felt that I had that perspective.

I would have loved to see more of the photographs too that Burke described. Those included in the book were wonderful to look at, and there were plenty, but I was hoping to see even more.

I am grateful though that Burke did bring such a fascinating person to light.

Our book club selected this and NONE of us were disappointed. And we had two photo books from the library to supplement our evening--which I highly recommend.

Personally, I loved this book. Like other reviewers, I never felt I got to know who Lee Miller was. But this wasn't an autobiography; Lee Miller may well fit a profile of child sexual abuse (detached from her feelings); or she may not have been very in touch with her feelings or very demonstrative emotionally to begin with. Perhaps photography was her attachment...but this is a book review.

What Carolyn Burke does so well, is bring the history to life thru the eyes or lens of a very extraordinarily talented woman. The book has many photos in it as examples. But I long to see the photos Carolyn Burke went to such great detail to describe. Photos by Theodore and Ray Man as well as one's by Lee herself.

While portions of the book read more like text or a guest book of the A list, I also think, perhaps if fit with the detached, perhaps emotionally isolated Lee herself...This book takes the reader into a bit of the limelight of 20's New York and 30's Paris. A different perspective on WWII and our modern times since.

I was clueless before someone in my book club had the good sense to suggest this book, and we all had the good sense to read it! It sent me to the library for more information and photographs.

This is a good way to get introduced to several cultural trends of the first half of the 20th century. Part gossip and part social history, it provides a glimpse into one of the interesting, high flying American lives especially when Miller is involved with the Surrealists in France in the 1930s and when she follows the Allied troops as they sweep up the Nazis. Miller is a very interesting character and Carolyn Burke seems to empathize with her many personal and professional issues. I found the structure of the book a little hard to follow. There are photographs spread throughout but not always in the places where you want to see them and it would have been better to have more photographs. There are also several places where Burke mentions some fairly significant event without following up. I found this book most useful as an overview of a tumultuous and confusing time in history seen through the life of one of the participants who seemed to be always in or near the center of things.

"Lee Miller: A Biography" is a must-read for anyone interested in learning about a woman who made a lasting impact on the Surrealist art scene coming out of Paris in the '20s and '30s. Even more importantly, though, Lee Miller's contribution to our understanding of World War II through her insightful photojournalism is especially educational and poignant. Having read "The Women Who Wrote the War" by Nancy Caldwell Sorel, I was already familiar with Lee's WWII experience, but it was absolutely fascinating to learn the more intimate details that molded Lee Miller into who she was by the time of WWII. Lee's ability to continually evolve herself and her creativity was well-captured by the author. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

I really enjoyed this book BUT FOR this little irritating phrase that cropped up throughout the last 1/4 of the book. If she "lost her looks," then...where did they go? The implicit observation seemed to be that, as she was no longer beautiful, she was no longer as special a person, and less worthy of our interest.

I can hardly believe that I knew so little about Lee Miller. Now remembered as primarily the uber muse of surrealism, the trajectory of her life was such that I found myself constantly backtracking to make certain I had read and recalled correctly the events, people, history, locations, lives.... She seemed to understand very early that to be an object of desire - to possess great beauty and elan - would not be enough. She made beauty work for her, took every opportunity to learn, to create herself in a way that showed amazing courage and strength. Lee Miller's life was certainly as madcap as that of Zelda Fitzgerald - with a lot of the same supporting characters. The same could be said of Lucia Joyce, also a contemporary. But Miller managed to transcend the American middleclass roots in a way Fitzgerald never could. The harrowing events of Miller's childhood were mitigated by a loving and supportive family, always denied Lucia Joyce.

This is an intriguing look at a fascinating woman. Carolyn Burke does a great job setting the context for the early life of Lee Miller. It's possible to get a sense of Paris in the 20s and 30s. Everything is energy and light. The edginess and uncertainty of the war years is well described. I didn't have the same feeling about the post-war years. I got the sense of the crushing dullness of her life in contrast to the challenge of life as a war correspondent, but Burke misses in providing the context. Miller and her husband, Roland Penrose, are still very involved in the arts. Their home is something of a way station for artists, they run a gallery and museum, they organize exhibitions and write books. And yet the context is missing: the focus of western art shifting to the US after WWII, abstraction displacing surrealism as the art of confrontation and change, the overwhelming movement from old to new and how the once avant-garde was reinterpreted as the establishment. The book touches on it, hints at "troubles" with younger artists' questions of relevance. To have glossed over this period actually robbed Lee's story of the thrill of triumph when the surrealists were rediscovered in the late 60s and 70s by a new generation of "flaming youth" -

OK, so that's a quibble. Overall, a good read. I know people have criticized the paltry selection of photos but that is true with many biographies and especially true with artist bios. Burke does a good job labeling and describing images: remember, the internet is your friend. If you aren't familiar enough with the players to visualize the works in question, take a few minutes every 50 pages or so and google the artists. You will be happy you did.

Two quotes come to mind which seem particularly apt for Lee Miller. From Tennyson, " I am part of all I have seen." From RL Stevenson, "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." At some point toward the end of her life, Lee Miller says she wishes she had been more free with love, affection, sex, creativity, etc, etc. That's Miller in a nutshell: MORE!

Like so many individuals over the ages, Lee Miller grew up in a relatively small community in what the media currently refers to as "Fly Over Country." A member of a talented middle class family, she enjoyed every advantage that her parents could provide, which was considerable. From an early age she displayed a thirst for adventure. She fled to Paris to study and fell in love with the Latin Quarter before returning to America. Moving to New York City she stepped into the path of and on-coming car and was pulled to safety by a well-dressed stranger. In shock, Lee babbled in French causing the stranger, Conde Nast, to take a closer look at the young woman he'd just rescued. He was impressed and asked her if she would like to come to work for one of his magazines--Vogue.
At age of 19 Lee became a cover girl for Vogue and was dubbed the embodiment of the modern girl. She was the official model for the legendary "flapper." Soon she was in demand by most of the most famous photographers in America including Edward Steichen and Arnold Genthe. Tiring of being just a New York celebrity-model Lee was soon back in Paris where in a single day she became the traveling companion, mistress, model, muse, photography assistant and student of photographer Man Ray. Through him she became a member of the Surrealists and lived and moved among the great artists and writers living and working in Montparnasse at the time.
Her early associations with these world famous artists would change her life. Under Man Ray's tutelage she slowly began a transformation from being in front of the camera to being behind it. She eventually received additional photographic training at the Clarence White School along with another soon-to-be-famous woman photographer Margaret Bourke-White.
After marrying a wealthy Egyptian and going slightly crazy as a member of the "Black Satin & Pearls" expatriates living in Cairo, Lee found her mission in life by another unlikely event rivaling her earlier "Grace Kelly-like" discovery by Conde Nast. World War II broke out while Lee awaited its predicted arrival in London. Unbelievably she was soon working as a war photographer for Vogue magazine. Through her good looks, charm, talent and stealth she was soon the only woman photographer covering the front lines of the European battlefront.
World War II was the highlight of Lee's photography career. She took to being a successful war correspondent like a duckling takes to water. She was tireless, talented, resourceful and finally fulfilled through accomplishing important work. Changed by her war experiences, (an early example of Post-Traumatic Stress) she never quite received the same sense of satisfaction for her later work, but she was no longer as restless after having fulfilled some indefinable need in her naturally adventurous personality. For a beautiful woman (Picasso painted six bare breasted portraits of her during one summer), she was able to shake off the handicap of being a NY celebrity and actually accomplishes some important work that fulfilled her innermost needs. She was no longer just Lady Penrose, but her own person with her own considerable accomplishments. When Queen Elizabeth knighted her husband fellow Surrealist Roland Penrose in 1966, it didn't turn her into a snob. She sometimes jokingly referred to herself as "Lady Lee of Poughkeepsie." There is a lot of humor in this biography. Here are two choice lines, paraphrased, neither of them by Lee: ..."brevity is the soul of lingerie" (Dottie Parker) and on the subject of a new brand of women's underwear for the well-dressed wartime English women, "One Yank and they come right off."
"The Art of Lee Miller" by Mark Haworth-Booth is an excellent companion book to Burke's biography because it reproduces many of the photographs discussed, but not shown in the biography. Lee Miller was notable for her beauty, her famous artist friends, her photography, her sense of humor and her infamous sexual exploits. Except for a few boring moments during her "Black Satin & Pearls" experience in Egypt, this exhaustively researched book is difficult to put aside. During the hours spent reading the WW II segments I would stop reading and find myself disoriented to be back in the present time and not on the European battlefields. That's powerful writing at work.
Lee Miller was much more than Vogue's personification of the "quintessential flapper." The reader can have fun comparing the Vogue cover of 19-year-old Lee as the epitome of the stylish modern New York woman with another picture of her washing off six-weeks of hard-won war correspondent grime while bathing in Hitler's personal bathtub in his captured Munich home. Unfortunately, she reported the bath reminded her too much of her recent, terrifying photo coverage of the liberation of Dachau and it's "bathhouse gas chambers."

Useless.. The text of this book describes some important photo's taken of/by Lee Miller, but same photo's aren't reproduced in the book. Very, very annoying. Maybe the publisher could't afford the rights to reproduce the photo's, I don't know. Anyway, this omission makes the whole thing a pointless exercise in frustration.