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She did so much with an extraordinary amount of courage.
RAPID GUNFIRE
It's very hard, I think, for women today to understand the degree
of the risks that she took.
You see that in Lee Miller's eyes.
There is a flame there that is ignited
when you see those photographs.
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She went for it, whatever it was.
She didn't let any of the
conventions of being a woman hold her back.
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I hope no-ne will ever forget the subject matter for those pictures.
I won't.
DOOR CREAKS
When I was growing up, I knew virtually nothing of my
mum's past achievements.
It was a book that she had closed.
People were trying to celebrate her, but she didn't want it.
She wanted to move on and she wanted to forget.
She packed her life into boxes -
Daz and Heinz Baked Beans -
cardboard boxes, and she put them in the attic.
Well, my late wife Suzanna found these photographs in the attic
of this old house.
My first reaction was disbelief.
I think Lee was very much burying the past.
And I think it was because she...she wasn't terribly happy.
She cut a somewhat lonely figure.
I had known my mum as a useless drunk,
a hysterical kind of person who...
Even catching a train in Lewis was a major episode for her.
I could not believe that she was the same person
that had created this material.
Now I felt that this was a story that needed to be told.
CAR HORNS BEEP
I feel with Lee that she knew she was going to be a star.
If you grow up in the suburbs...
I mean, Poughkeepsie's a train ride from New York.
..all you want is the big city.
So, Lee goes to New York.
She has youth, she has beauty.
She's confident.
Men take her out for dinner, and then...
CAR HORN BEEPS, TYRES SCREECH
The story is that Lee Miller stepped
out in front of an automobile.
And as the driver swerved to a halt,
the most powerful man in fashion
managed to scoop her up.
And that man was Conde Nast, who is
the founder of American Vogue.
And what is a fact is, within a very short time of meeting
Conde Nast - who had a bit of a casting couch, apparently -
but very soon after meeting him, she was on the cover of Vogue.
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When I look at the images of Lee Miller, I see a woman
who is entirely comfortable in her skin, entirely comfortable
with who she is as a person, as a woman.
And how thoroughly modern she must have been then, beyond modern,
how, probably, ground-breaking she was.
I knew very little of her as a model.
It's not something that she ever talked about at all.
Well, she never talked about anything to do with this.
She never showed me the beautiful pictures in Vogue
of her looking absolutely fabulous.
Part of the reason that Lee Miller was such a great model
is she'd been modelling from the day she was born.
Lee's father photographed her all the time.
Theodore Miller was a serious amateur photographer, quite adept
at the techniques of the time, including the stereoscopic camera.
Images would merge with each other
to give you an illusion of depth.
Theodore would probably have considered himself an artist,
and he took pictures of his daughter that, to our eyes,
are very dubious.
DOOR CREAKS
I didn't know about these pictures until after Lee died,
and it was part of the stash that we found.
I was quite shocked, actually, because I thought
that they were an invasion of the normal
father-daughter relationship.
And, of course, by that time I'd got my own daughters and I could no
more imagine me taking these kind of pictures.
If you step back and don't think
that those pictures of a father,
of a daughter, they're actually
quite good for an amateur photographer.
But the minute you know that that's her dad,
then you just can't get over it.
It's a transgression of a relationship.
Theodore's photographs of Lee,
I see as a collaboration.
I see her as a participant.
I see... And a life experience so similar to my own.
When Mom was working on a photograph, it was a family affair.
I grew up in a family where we were very comfortable with nudity
and being nude around each other.
And it's very sad that people
cannot conceive of Lee engaging in nudity around her father
without it becoming sexualised.
I think women and children in art,
the assumption is one of exploitation, and that is not
what I see at all with her as a child subject
or as an adult subject.
He did bring her up as his favourite model, and this continued
into her teens and early 20s,
apparently without any distress or qualms or worries on her part,
as far as we can tell.
Having already learned quite a bit about photography at home,
she could talk photography with the great photographers
like Steichen, with whom she worked.
She was probably forming the idea that she'd like to take
the photographs herself.
And I think it was Steichen who said, "Well, if you want to
"study with one of the greats, you should go to Paris
"and study with Man Ray."
SHIP HORN BLARES
JAZZ MUSIC
Paris in the late '20s was the centre of the world.
Paris is Paris, and Paris is jazz, and Lee is jazz.
Being in Paris in the '30s, for a woman like Lee, was literally
about ripping your corset off because, you know, it's when fashion
changes, it's when the world changes.
It's...it's a moment of...just huge possibility.
MUSIC CONTINUES
You know, Lee, first I think we'd better clear up just how you
happened to be a photographer in the first place.
I thought the best way was to start out studying with one
of the great masters in the field, Man Ray.
He was in Paris at that time, so I went to him and said,
"Hello, I'm your new student and apprentice."
He said, "Oh, no, you're not. I don't have students or apprentices."
I said, "You do now."
At first she was his student.
She was also his studio assistant.
But they also became lovers early on.
Why did Lee Miller - golden, beautiful, fashionable...
..fall for a man who was basically
half her height, not very golden?
Because she had much to learn
and he was a great photographer.
For Man Ray, I think it was the incarnation of the most
improbable relationship that he could have imagined.
This incredibly beautiful, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant
from New York dropping into his
lap and his life in this way.
There's still so much that Man Ray
did with Lee Miller that was ground-breaking.
I don't think anyone had ever seen photography as that sort of daring.
This level of artistic genius between the pair of them,
it resonates in photography today.
She understands what Man Ray is asking of her.
From my personal experience,
there is this sense of just knowing
what the photographer wants.
And manipulating herself
into these sort of shapes
and positions, but also
being attuned to sort of look
into the camera and convey life...
It is an alchemy of two people.
The photographer, the muse.
Typically, historically, the artist has then taken the photographs,
produced amazing work and walked away saying, "Look at this amazing
"work that I made," as opposed to saying, "Look at this gift
"I've been given and the
"extraordinary magic of this collaboration."
And he did not negate her in retrospect,
which I think, again, speaks volumes about her -
the extent of the respect that he had for her.
Lee and Man fit perfectly into the
world of the Surrealists in the 1930s.
That movement seemed very... not only very unconventional,
but very freeing for the women as well.
To be treated not only as muses, but as muses who were themselves
artists and could participate.
Lee's relationship with Man Ray changed her life in the sense
that it really made her into a Surrealist photographer.
She could already do the fashion and stuff like that.
But I think Man Ray really encouraged that wonderful element
in her work, which is the surreal.
I do think, with Lee Miller, she is much more lauded as an artist
and a creator as well as a muse.
I see a woman who is in charge, and she's the one calling the shots.
And I just love that!
People forget that she actually had her own studio in Paris
and she was working on doing her own commissions.
And working with Hoyningen-Huene,
who is the boss of Paris Vogue Studios.
METRONOME TICKS
He did everything he could, almost, to further her photographic career.
However, he also wanted to control her.
I think we could see it as the relationship of a much younger
woman with a much older man, that initially the power lies
with the man and then there's the shift and it lies with the woman.
And the ending, really, with Man Ray is probably...
..she got what she wanted.
And he struggled to try and possess and control
this totally uncontrollable woman.
And that's what broke them apart in the end, after three years.
CHEERING, APPLAUSE
Lee Miller, a bride!
"Poughkeepsie, New York, September 4th.
"Mr and Mrs Theodore H Miller
"of this city today announced the marriage of their daughter,
"Lee Miller, to Aziz Eloui Bey of Cairo, Egypt."
Why did Lee Miller marry an Egyptian businessman - that she'd met,
I believe, skiing - and move to Cairo?
He is extremely wealthy,
but he also offers her a kind of magic carpet
to the Arabian Nights, in her mind.
So they get married very quickly in City Hall and she tells
her parents something along the
lines of, "Oh, you know that guy Aziz? Well, I just married him."
She found in Cairo a very luxurious
establishment with servants
and cooks and all sorts of people to look after her.
And for a time she found
a great change of scene which interested her.
For several years, she was quite happily immersed in her new life.
But, in time, this too became insufficient for her.
Lee realised it was full of people
who were pickled with drink
and dried in the sun, and the women had nothing to do.
And I think she got bored extremely quickly.
As an antidote to the boredom of life, she found her Rolleiflex
and started taking pictures again.
And this was one of the most
exciting photographic periods of her career.
So she began going on expeditions into the desert
to take very unusual and, to my mind, highly successful photographs
that have almost a more spiritual dimension.
Certainly the picture she made through the torn fly screen,
Portrait Of Space, that shows that
kind of conjunction of all of the surreal qualities,
all of her internal feelings in that one shot, in that one place.
It seems almost meditative to me.
She had a strong desire to escape into something else
and another place.
And it was in Egypt that she could explore that.
When she was married to Aziz and living in Egypt, she even writes
about it in her letters that she feels like she needs to be
a proper wife, and she knows what the expectations are,
but she just finds it too hard.
And...and it just doesn't work!
Aziz knew that Lee was unhappy
in Cairo and pining for Paris,
so he bought her an airline ticket.
And she flew to Paris, and on the night she arrived
she heard that there was this big party on.
JAZZ MUSIC, LAUGHTER
And it was a fancy dress party,
and all of her Surrealist friends were there.
It must've been the most wonderful reunion.
And that's where she met my dad, Roland Penrose.
I think Aziz shot himself in the foot, really, didn't he?
Cos he was so nice and bought her a
ticket to go to Paris to see her friends,
and then the same night she meets my grandad.
It's a bit like, "Damn!"
If you'd known, would you have bought the ticket, Aziz?
Lee is now, I think it'd be fair to say, in lust with Roland Penrose,
and he feels exactly the same.
WAVES GENTLY BREAK
There is one extraordinary
photograph which kind of sums up
1937 in Lee's life.
They are on this holiday with
a group of people to the South of France.
You see a lot of guys with their tops on...
..and women with their tops off in the picnic picture,
which, if you ever want anything
to encompass the Surrealists, is a great one.
Also, you know, if you zoom close into Roland,
you can see an Englishman who's
desperately trying to break free
from his Victorian upbringing,
as he's looking very kind of,
"Yes, I'm studying liberation here."
SHE CHUCKLES
She was the sort of person that he wanted to be, in some respects.
The dynamic of the Surrealists
is a dynamic of free love, but free love which tends to favour men
having the free love that they want
and not so much the women.
Then you put Lee Miller into that mix...
..and Lee is definitely someone who always thinks,
"Well, I don't see why men should be able to do something that I can't."
For her to own the power of her sexuality,
to harness it and then to enjoy it for herself...
I mean, that's crazy.
I'm so proud of all the sex she had, right?
Like, way to go!
It makes me so happy to know that there's a blip in history
where at least one woman...
..had a good time.
It's one of those moments where everyone
in that photograph is signalling,
"I couldn't be anywhere else than here right now."
It's a moment of extraordinary happiness and joy,
but most of all freedom.
And when we look at it now, of course, it's very poignant,
because what they know - and they do know -
is that war is coming.
The summer of 1937 was a wonderful affair with my grandad,
but she did go back, she went back to Egypt.
"Darling Lee, this is hell. Another week on and still no news of you.
"Three weeks now since your last letter arrived.
"I get more and more depressed and worried every day."
It still takes him two years to convince her that he's the guy.
"When I got married, I really did it for better or for worse.
"With that little idea blown to hell by this summer and you, it makes me
"cynically suspicious of any attachment I might make.
"Aziz and I had a long conversation
"about you, and my situation in general.
"He doesn't want to divorce me
"unless he's sure I'm going to be happy and taken care of elsewhere."
It was inevitable that Lee left him because she just could not live
without the artistic environment
that she had experienced in Paris or even New York.
I don't know how she does it, by the way, with her men.
I don't know how she manages to keep all her men in love with her,
right the way through your life.
Man Ray is still there. Aziz,
she treats him terribly and has all sorts of affairs behind... You know,
but he knows about them and he even says, "If you leave me,
"can I be one of your lovers?"
But when she left him, he gave her a portfolio of shares
so that she could always be independent.
And he... You know,
what an amazing guy.
SHE CHUCKLES
AIR-RAID SIREN
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What brought Lee Miller to London is Roland Penrose.
He is absolutely loaded.
But Lee's very independent, so she wants her own job.
So, what does Lee know?
She knows how to model - not madly useful in a city under bombardment -
and she knows how to take photographs.
One day she meets the most dowdy, unfashionable
tweedy, blue-stocking woman,
and this British woman who could not
be less, like, glamorous
American, scintillating,
gorgeous Lee Miller,
is the editor of Vogue, and she is Audrey Withers.
And Lee offers Audrey everything she needs.
Vogue is a fashion magazine.
Britain is a country under rationing.
So, what Vogue celebrates is, kind of, "make do and mend".
And so Lee is taking the pictures.
I mean, some of the pictures are sort of hilarious
because the clothes, of course, are borderline hideous.
Audrey Withers was an extraordinary woman in her own right.
She had a real interest in women's rights,
in women's independence,
and in the creativity and contribution that they could make.
Women's magazines were key, because you have to remember
that many British men were in the Armed Forces and serving
overseas and that it was women who were not only running
the household, but also taking over men's roles.
And so, if the Ministry of Information wanted to get a general
message out, they always factored in the women, and the women's
magazines in particular.
Lee's transition from being a lapsed fashion photographer to shooting
for Vogue was actually not a huge step.
The big step was when she became a photojournalist.
And then, one day, she meets a young Life magazine photographer
called David Scherman,
and each has what the other needs.
EXPLOSION
David Scherman is a really very, very good photographer
who is already, you know, completely bloodied in war.
He's quite heroic, actually.
David Scherman was befriended by Lee and they struck up
an extraordinarily close friendship.
And Roland invited Scherman to come and live with them.
It was a menage a trois.
They were having a jolly good time, those three!
SHE LAUGHS
HILARY ROBERTS: David Scherman taught her the art of
news photography, and in order
to do what she wanted to do, which was take photographs
that mattered, that were relevant to the war effort and not simply
be confined to fashion, she had to become
an official war correspondent.
I explained to Lee, "You're an American. Why don't you just get
"a uniform and get accredited to the American Army?"
And she said, "That's a good idea."
So she promptly bought a uniform in Savile Row,
had it specially made. She took it very seriously and decided
that she would be a war photographer.
Audrey wants Lee
to cover the war.
Lee desperately wants to cover the war.
Lee always sees an opportunity,
so war is opportunity, and just goes, "I could do that."
Lee Miller gets dumped into this town, that's pacified, to do
a story on women, and suddenly she's under sniper fire.
GUNSHOTS
And one can only imagine that she would have been utterly terrified,
but then slightly exhilarated.
EXPLOSION
The story was one of mistaken intelligence.
She was able to go there because it was thought
that Saint-Malo had already fallen, that the battle was over.
In fact, it was pretty much just beginning.
"From outside the town, we heard bombers approaching
"over our shoulder. There were three groups of B-26s.
"They passed and we could see
"the bombs away by their attitude, if nothing else.
"I had the clothes I was standing in, a couple of dozen films
"in an eiderdown blanket roll.
"I was the only photographer for miles around,
"and I now owned a private war."
Remember that she had no training for this sort of work.
No professional training as a photographer had prepared
her for this sort of work. It was "work it out as you go along".
"Deadly hit. For a moment, I could see where and how.
"Then it was swallowed in smoke, belching, mushrooming and columning,
"towering up, black and white.
"Our house shuddered and stuff flew in the window.
"More bombs crashing, thundering, flashing like Vesuvius."
The difficult bit was becoming a writer.
She'd never written anything before.
But now, suddenly, she was having to put words to pictures.
"I sheltered in a cramped dugout, squatting under the ramparts.
"My heel ground into a dead, detached hand, and I cursed the
"Germans for the sordid, ugly destruction they had conjured up
"in this once beautiful town.
"I picked up the hand and hurled it across the street and ran back
"the way I'd come, bruising my feet
"and crashing into the unsteady
"piles of stone and slipping in blood. Christ, it was awful."
As a war photographer, I think it's
actually important to have fear,
but to know how to manage it.
Because that will also keep you alive, you know.
I think if you're fearless,
you're likely to get killed pretty quickly.
At one point I had to run through sniper fire.
And, you know, ISIS was 150m away. I mean, that's nothing.
And, I mean, the fear that...that, you know, just leading up to
that run between buildings, you know, was like,
"Will this be my last run?
"Will I die? Will I get shot?"
There's an adrenaline rush, of course, that gets you through.
Definitely, women like her blazed a trail.
I think there is a type of woman that goes into this war.
Women who were tough but funny, irreverent, who really rejected
all the norms of what women's lives should have been at that time.
There were no British female photographers who did what
Lee Miller did. For the Americans,
they had a more open policy.
But the fact that there were only four women photographers
who were accredited in that respect
gives you an idea of how rare it still was.
The whole body of work from
Saint-Malo is fascinating
because it shows an evolution
in Lee Miller's thinking.
The tone and the mood darkens.
And I would say that that is almost a turning point in Lee Miller's war,
because this is where, if you like, she had her baptism of fire,
and from hereon in, until the very end of her time
as a war correspondent,
this darker note never quite leaves her photography.
CHEERING
TYPEWRITER KEYS CLICK
"Dear Audrey, I won't be the first woman journalist in Paris,
"but I'll be the first dame photographer, I think, unless
"someone parachutes in.
"It is bitter to me to go to Paris
"now that I have a taste for gunpowder.
"Could you arrange that Roland Penrose could read my piece
"soon, as I haven't written him or anyone yet?"
Lee had fantastic stamina.
I would simply go to sleep, wake up about six or eight hours later,
and she was still there knocking...knocking, tapping away
at the typewriter.
TYPEWRITER KEYS CLICK
"Our boys were kissed and cheered and showered with presents.
"They battled in one square and celebrated in the next."
We were the first photographers in many places. In fact, it got
to be sort of a joke.
I remember Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune
would continually arrive at a spot and say, "How does it happen
"that when I'm just arriving at some spot, Lee Miller and Dave Scherman
"are just leaving?"
increased dramatically as she saw the results of the war.
"The love of death, which is the under-pattern of the German
"living, caught up with the high officials of the regime
"and they gave a great party, toasted death and Hitler,
"and poisoned themselves.
"Leaning back on the sofa is a girl
"with extraordinarily pretty teeth, waxen and dusty."
I think the power of that image is sort of how quietly beautiful it is.
I think the light is very soft, and I think
the composition is beautiful.
And I think that's very eerie, of course, given the context
and given what had just happened.
But, to me, that's really the power of a good photograph, is that,
A, it evokes emotions that are unexpected,
but, B, it makes you ask questions.
And I think that that's exactly what that image does.
CHURCH BELL TOLLS
"Germany is a beautiful landscape dotted with jewel-like villages,
"blotched with ruined cities.
"The children have stilts and marbles and tops and hoops,
"and they play with dolls.
"Mothers sew and sweep and bake, and farmers plough and harrow,
"all just like real people - but they aren't.
"They are the enemy.
"This is Germany and it is spring."
Lee's arrival with Dave Scherman at Dachau
is one of the central times in her story.
They came just in the very process of the liberation of Dachau.
She felt it to be a deep moral
calling to reveal the truth
as she understood it.
DAVID SCHERMAN: Well, we had to just sort of steel ourselves for it,
like a surgeon going into a operating room or like a police
examiner going into a morgue to do a postmortem.
If you started worrying about it, you'd go to pot right away.
You'd just come apart at the seams.
HEARTBEAT
If you have a camera in your hand, you suddenly think about it only,
and its being a job,
then you simply steel yourself to the...to the horrors of the thing.
HEARTBEAT CONTINUES
"I implore you to believe this is true.
"I usually don't take pictures
"of horrors, but don't think
"that every town and every area
"isn't rich with them.
"I hope Vogue will feel that it can publish these pictures."
Audrey Withers and American Vogue
agreed to publish this work.
I think that coverage is the most
graphic and difficult that
Vogue Magazine has ever carried.
The pictures from Dachau are incredible.
I don't know if this day and age of people would publish them as much
because, ironically, the more violence we see
and the more we're inundated with images, the more kind
of prude we get.
Those images of bodies stacked on top of each other,
you don't see those, and that's happening.
I mean, there are mass graves being unearthed in Syria now,
you know, but we don't see those images.
I have met nobody who has seen
those scenes in any concentration
camp, who has talked about them
willingly or has been able to
walk away from them.
I had seen nothing.
She kept everything away from me.
I think that Lee definitely did not
want to revisit that experience
by talking about it.
You know, we're all very, very different and we all process
trauma and, um, these scenes
in a very different way,
so I can't possibly know how she felt
and what she walked away feeling.
But I do know for myself, you know, it's important when I walk away
from a scene like that to revisit it and to talk about it a lot.
And that's sort of how I deal with my own trauma.
A lot of people with PTSD, they never deal with it,
and they just shut down and it doesn't go away and, in fact,
it's been proven that it gets worse over time.
I interviewed several friends who were very young women at the time
when they visited Lee at Farley Farm, who said that sometimes,
late at night, at 3am, if they stayed up with Lee and drank
with her - because she would drink a great deal -
she would break down and sometimes cry and tell them,
"You have to be careful about what you let yourself in for."
And she would allude sometimes, briefly, to those moments
in the concentration camps.
It was still with her.
If you take photographs like that,
they remain imprinted on your brain.
So, Lee's only in Dachau for actually a few hours.
What happens next is that she goes to Hitler's apartment.
This is an example of the working partnership of Lee and David,
the really efficient news-gathering partnership, which means
that you find a goal and you head for it.
And, um, if you're lucky, you scoop the opposition.
"I've been carrying Hitler's Munich address around in my pocket
"for years, and finally I had a chance to use it,
"but mein host wasn't home."
We wound up in Hitler's home on 27 Regent Street,
which a bunch of GIs had simply taken over as a place to crash.
And that was the spot that we got some GIs to read a copy
of Hitler's Mein Kampf with their feet up on Hitler's bed,
lying on Hitler's pillow.
"I took some pictures of the place,
"and I also got a good night's sleep in Hitler's bed.
"I even washed the dirt of Dachau off in his own tub."
We hadn't seen a bathtub for weeks, so Lee immediately jumped into
the bathtub and I photographed her, and I locked the door
so we wouldn't be disturbed.
And suddenly there was this tremendous banging on the door.
The lieutenant was dying to get in and shave.
And he said, you know, "Get out of there. Whoever you are,
"you've been in there too long."
It was sort of the last of the...the last of the Hitler myth right
there, in that spot that night.
The story of Lee Miller in Hitler's
bathtub has spread around the world,
and it's the one with which she's most identified.
It's got all the elements - a beautiful woman sitting in a bath
with no clothes on...
There is an equivalent photograph by Lee of David Scherman in the bath,
and nobody is very interested in looking at that one.
That photograph, for many years after the war,
was actually completely forgotten.
And it was really only after her
death that it became
as well-known as it currently is today.
So, initially, the idea was just to have a bath,
and then they realised what the circumstances were,
and between them they made an enduring story out of it.
They placed the photograph of Hitler by Heinrich Hoffmann,
Hitler's pet photographer,
and it was actually a kind of vanity shot.
But the key to the shot is the boots, because those boots...
..carried Lee around Dachau that morning, and now she's grinding
"the filth of that place into Hitler's nice, clean bath-mat.
And, of course, what neither of them knew in that moment was,
way across Germany, in Berlin at 4:45 that afternoon, Hitler and
Eva Braun had killed themselves,
and so there's this kind of incredible closing of a circle
in that image, as well as that defiance of stamping the filth
into Hitler's bath-mat.
GUNSHOT
A strange-looking carving by the modern sculptor Henry Moore
watches the arrival of a young lady whose comings and goings make news.
The name is Lee Miller, press photographer,
just back from gathering scoops on the Continent.
Roland Penrose, surrealist artist,
welcomes her back and helps her to get rid of the baggage
she's had to hump round on her news, getting jobs.
The end of the war was, I think, the most difficult thing that Lee faced,
and she really got lost.
I think, in a way, she recognised that she was beaten.
KITTEN MEOWS
Sure, she was a peacetime casualty in many ways.
Her objectives had been taken away from her.
Her raison d'etre was taken away from her.
Roland, by this time, had sort of given up on her.
She was not answering his letters.
He'd taken up with someone else in London, uh, and I saw
Lee's position as being badly threatened.
Eventually it was Scherman who said, "Go home."
And it was, I guess, with a big sigh that she did decide finally to
knock it off and go back home.
It is as if that she opens the door, walks back into her life
with Roland and nothing is changed.
It couldn't be further from the truth.
He had to learn afresh how it was
to have this deeply damaged
and disturbed person, who he loved.
He had to cope with all of that.
She tried to go back into fashion,
taking pictures of hats and handbags,
and tried to kind of go back to how things were before the war,
but when you've watched such life-changing things,
then it's very hard to adjust.
She's told by, you know, a doctor she goes to see
to pull herself together.
She is also a raging alcoholic by this point.
She then has lost her looks.
So, the biggest power that she has always played on has gone.
Then we add that she gets pregnant.
Then she may well have had postnatal depression.
She didn't find it very easy to be a mother.
And then Roland Penrose,
who sees the woman of his life
just being absolutely destroyed,
comes up with a bright idea -
because he's very tin-eared, Roland -
to move this woman, who is completely urban, who loves
connecting with people, to a lonely farm in the country,
where she knows nobody,
with a newborn baby.
It's astonishing to me that she actually survived.
I think "lost" is a good way to describe her at Farley Farm.
I think Lee was such a complicated person.
All we could see as, you know, Tony and I growing up, was somebody
who was just difficult.
I get a sense that she was dissociated.
It's something that she used effectively, and as a model
she could just disconnect from her surroundings,
disconnect from everything and just be this beautiful object.
And later, when she became the combat photographer
and was in this terrible danger,
witnessing awful things, I think
she used that sense of dissociation
to detach from the horror
that surrounded her.
And I think that sense of dissociation, that sense
of disconnect between her emotional
side and her physical side
inevitably came from her childhood trauma.
The story of what happened to Lee
when she was seven years old
is hard to, um, clarify.
She was staying with friends of the family, very good friends,
in, I believe, Brooklyn for a sort of holiday.
These friends left the little girl
in the care of a young man
who was either a boarder or a relative.
And what we know is that he took advantage of this time
and he did indeed rape the little girl.
After the rape, she was rushed home.
She was subjected to the most
painful, humiliating treatment
available at the time,
because she developed
a sexually transmitted disease.
Her mother, who was a nurse, had to administer
this extraordinarily painful treatment every day.
Her brother heard his sister screaming in the bathroom.
And the whole thing was, of course,
hush-hush because this was a huge
scandal and no-one wanted it to be
known that this had happened
to little Elizabeth Miller.
It was the final piece in the puzzle.
I could never really understand why she was so secretive.
But as a child, she had learned
to keep secrets,
and that was important for her survival.
And she was good at it.
Why she buried the past and all
of those photographs in boxes in the attic...
..perhaps she wanted to put it behind her, not dwell on these most
painful times and images and moments...
..rather than address them head-on.
When she died...
..emotionally it affected me, personally, very little.
And I didn't really shed tears for her until I began writing
her biography, and that's when
I began to really understand her,
and that's when I practically
drowned my word processor,
because I realised how much I'd missed.
There was so much I wish I'd known
about her and understood.
Yes, it's been an extraordinary
voyage of understanding.
When Lee died, I wanted to write an obit for American Vogue,
because she died totally unrecognised.
I wanted to write an obit, and I got to thinking about what form
the obit would take.
Because she led six, eight, ten
discrete, totally different lives.
She was an amazing, unusual person.
Exasperating person, lovable person,
beautiful person, ugly person.
She was all of these different things.
Those were her different lives.
The temptation is to seek women that aren't quite so challenging.
But what we need are examples like Lee Miller.
We need women that are complicated and fully three-dimensional.
When I think about Lee Miller,
it wasn't that she was leaning in to be taken seriously by the men.
She didn't even care.
She's just a woman who did not
apologise for who she was.