An Ignored Partnership – The Metropolitan Museum of Art

When Lee Miller (1907–1977) arrived in Paris in 1929, she had rejected a portray profession and had “given up art.” Prior to this, she had been a pupil on the Art Students League in New York, and after a brief spell in Florence learning and drawing from work by Italian masters, declared that so far as she was involved “all the paintings had been painted,” and thus she turned to images.

Miller’s images background up thus far was from her father, a talented newbie whose predominant curiosity was stereoscopic imagery. Having labored as a mannequin in New York, she additionally gleaned information of the medium whereas posing for Edward Steichen (1879–1973), whom she had identified since she was a toddler, and for different style photographers of the day.

Her plan to hunt out Man Ray in Paris was a calculated danger; she had the promise of modeling work for George Hoyningen-Huene (1900–1968) at French Vogue as a security web. (In truth, she continued to mannequin part-time to complement her revenue till mid-1931.) Although Man Ray had different college students, he initially refused Lee, however the mixture of a letter of introduction from Steichen and Miller’s willpower modified his thoughts.

Miller’s apprenticeship with Man Ray is usually misrepresented as being the complete interval that she was in Paris, between July 1929 and October 1932. However, she thought of it to be solely the primary 9 months—after which they labored collectively as equals, inspiring and supporting one another of their aims.

Although Miller and Man Ray labored intensively and rapidly turned lovers, Miller maintained her independence regardless of a seventeen-year age hole. By July 1930, she was dwelling in and working her personal images studio at 12 rue Victor Considérant, close to the Montparnasse Cemetery. It was an house with a mezzanine degree protecting over half the house; she used a part of it as her studio and transformed the kitchen so she may develop prints there. She additionally used Man Ray’s studio for her personal shoots, although she described his darkroom as being no greater than “a bathroom rug.”

One instance of their collaboration is her unintentional rediscovery within the darkroom of the photographic phenomenon known as the Sabattier impact (a second publicity of the detrimental or print throughout the improvement course of), which she shared with Man Ray. After perfecting it collectively, Man Ray named it “solarization.” Both photographers used the method of their work from this level on. Another is their shut partnership on the Électricité portfolio, which a Paris-based electrical energy firm commissioned Man Ray to supply in 1931. The portfolio was an version of 5 hundred copies, every containing ten pictures that celebrated electrical energy. Miller helped with the concepts behind most of the pictures. The ultimate ten works used totally different strategies, largely photograms (rayographs) and a solarized picture printed as photogravures. Aware that he would obtain all of the credit score, Man Ray inscribed in Lee’s copy: “To Lee Miller, without your enthusiasm and without your aid this album would not have been possible, gratefully, Man Ray.” Despite Man Ray’s intentions, Lee’s contributions are sadly nonetheless usually ignored right now.

Man Ray’s relationship with portray was fairly the alternative of Miller’s. She said in later interviews that inside lower than a 12 months of beginning to work with Man Ray, she was doing the vast majority of his images work for him as a result of he needed to give attention to portray. Before that, he gave her jobs that he didn’t need or that didn’t pay a lot. It was Miller who recommended that she tackle all of his images work. This meant that his commissions between 1930 and 1932 had been undertaken primarily by Miller but printed beneath his title in order that they may nonetheless acquire fee for the work. At the time, she didn’t care about her work being attributed to Man Ray, as they had been each artists supporting one another in doing what they cherished.

I don’t consider that Man Ray meant to take all the credit score for Miller’s rediscovery of solarization and for the work that she carried out for him, or her enter on his initiatives: attribution was merely not essential to both on the time, particularly since they each ardently believed within the alternate of concepts and inspirations. There are additionally a number of examples of Man Ray selling Miller’s profession as a photographer. It was Man Ray who launched the New York gallerist Julien Levy (1906–1981) to Miller’s work. Subsequently, Levy represented Miller and gave her first solo exhibition in New York, which opened on December 30, 1932. 

Unfortunately for Miller, when it got here to recording the histories of images, she had a number of components towards her, primarily the relative lack of canonical recognition for feminine artists. Another chance is that after World War II, when affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction, she buried her images profession as a means of coping together with her psychological well being points. While these introduced challenges for Miller, her relationship with Man Ray endured.

Man Ray visited Miller at her East Sussex dwelling a number of occasions between 1954 and 1966. She and her second husband, Roland Penrose (1900–1984), additionally visited Man Ray in Hollywood and Paris on a number of events, and there was sustained correspondence between them. Man Ray even appointed Miller to characterize him at Les Rencontres d’Arles, a famend images pageant, when he was honored there in 1976 however too unwell to attend. In what’s believed to be the ultimate letter Man Ray wrote to Lee Miller on March 14, 1975, he signed off: “I am pinned down in my little retreat—cannot walk and my doctor seems to try out all the pills on the market—to which I am completely allergic. But not to my loves—like you, I mean—I love you. Man.” The incontrovertible fact that Man Ray and Lee Miller remained in contact as buddies till the tip of their lives is testimony to the love and respect they’d for one another.

Notes

[1] Mario Amaya, “My Man Ray: interview with Lee Miller Penrose,” Art in America, May/June 1975, 55.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Parisienne de Distribution d’Électricité. See “Introduction” in D’Alessandro and Pinson, Man Ray: When Objects Dream (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025), 29–30.