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Lee Miller was more than a muse. Her story continues to inspire me — and Kate Winslet
Look up Lee Miller and you’ll find a list of descriptors that speaks to her life of reinvention: model, Surrealist artist, fashion photographer, war correspondent, gourmet chef. She had many talents, many creative interests, but often the word that starts the list is “muse.”
There’s no denying the accuracy of this term, even though it rankled her. In addition to being an artist in her own right, Lee was a muse to many men throughout her life, from her father, an amateur photographer who traumatized her by taking nude photos of her as an adolescent; to Edward Steichen and the other fashion greats who photographed her for Vogue magazine; to Surrealist artist Man Ray, whose brief affair with her provided him with artistic inspiration that bordered on obsession, and who would use pieces of her body—her eyes, her throat, her lips—in his work for the next 40 years.
I first encountered Lee through her complicated collaboration with Man Ray, documented in a 2011 exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum called “Man Ray and Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism.” I’d never heard of her before I went to the exhibit, and I’ll never forget the moment I first encountered her work.
Like Man Ray before me, I became — there’s no other word for it — obsessed with her. As I wandered through the exhibit rooms, I marveled at Lee’s talent, her audaciousness, her formidable spirit. This was a woman who, in 1929, at the age of 22, moved to Paris alone to reinvent herself as an artist. She’d already been a successful model, but she’d hated it, and she arrived in Paris determined, as she said, “to take pictures, not be one.” She had a letter of introduction to Man Ray, who was by then a wildly successful artist, and boldly knocked on his door and asked to be his student. He was charmed by her — what man wasn’t? — and hired her as his assistant, an arrangement that swiftly entangled them in a volatile professional, artistic and romantic relationship. During her years with Man Ray, Lee learned the techniques that she would use first in her own portrait studio, and later, on the battlefields of World War II as a war correspondent.
I hadn’t even made it through the whole exhibit before I found myself wondering why no one had written a novel about this incredible woman. When I got home that afternoon, I went online and bought a biography about her, launching me into years of research and writing that would eventually become my novel based on Lee Miller’s life. I felt a fierce urge to lift her up above those men who had raked their gaze across her all her life. To tell her story, in a way that gave her the agency that she so justly deserved.
I felt a fierce urge to lift her up above those men who had raked their gaze across her all her life.
As I was writing my novel, one artifact from the exhibit served as a touchstone for me: a scrap of paper from Man Ray’s journal, where he’d scrawled her name dozens of times. Elizabeth Elizabeth Lee Lee Lee Elizabeth Elizabeth. He was almost 40 when they met, 17 years older than her and at the height of his powers, and yet he was so undone by her that he was reduced to a schoolboy’s romantic scribbling, smitten to the point of fixation.
I was so curious about how it might have felt to have that kind of power — a power that, yes, came from her beauty and the objectifying pleasure men took in looking at her, but was wielded by Lee in an extraordinary way. With it she got what she wanted from a man like Man Ray — and later, she used what she had learned from him, and the confidence that her power had given her, to insist that Vogue make her their first war correspondent, to insist that they allow her to go to the front lines, and to sites like Dachau and Hitler’s apartment in Munich, where she did the best work of her career. It’s one thing to be beautiful and submit to the gaze of men; it’s another to understand that beauty is a currency that can be used to get what one wants, at a time when what one wants runs counter to what women were allowed to have.
There’s a movie about Lee out this month, with Kate Winslet in the lead role, and I recently watched an interview with Winslet on “Good Morning America.” Much like my novel, the movie took years to make, a labor of love spearheaded almost entirely by Winslet, who invested her time, money and considerable star power in getting it made. Her obsession (there’s that word again) with Lee was so palpable in the interview that Robin Roberts commented on it, saying, “your passion is evident.”
As Winslet responded, I recognized myself in her (hey, Kate, you superstar, I see you!), and it struck me that for both of us, Lee Miller has been what she was for Man and all the men that came before him: our muse. I can’t speak for Winslet, but I know what I’m hoping, which is that our enchantment with Lee centers her — as an artist, as a woman — and returns to her some of the power she gave to other artists.
Thirteen years after I first saw that exhibit, my novel long finished and published, I remain just as awestruck by Lee as ever. She’s still a touchstone for me and most likely always will be, an example of how to lead a full and fearless life. Hanging on my office wall, I have a print of a self-portrait she made when she was still with Man Ray. Compare this portrait to the pictures Man Ray took of her at that time, and the contrast between how she saw herself and how men saw her is striking. In his images, she’s all soft focus and submission; in hers, she’s a Greek statue, her body as strong as marble, as radiant as if she’s lit from within.
While artists like Man Ray sliced and diced her body into objects — lips, breasts, eyes — my hope is that being a muse for the female gaze will allow the whole picture of the incredible Lee Miller to emerge. I hope, too, that Lee would be honored to have women making art out of her life’s story as well as her artistic legacy — art that seeks to understand her, rather than merely look at her. In this way, it’s her drive and her talent and her courage that serve as muse, and continue to inspire.
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