Two Elizabeths, Written By A Third Elizabeth
First things first, I need to get a few things off my chest:
- Elizabeth Taylor has violet eyes.
- Elizabeth Taylor has two sets of eyelashes.
- Elizabeth Taylor has never impressed me with her “great beauty.”
She’s fine looking, but I don’t understand all the fuss. Moving on to another Elizabeth: Lee Miller (1907-1977). Despite her being from the 1920s/30s, she has a contemporary face. She could easily fit in with today’s crowd. At the LACMA, there was a portrait (painting) of this guy from the 1700s or earlier and he looked like such a modern day man, Maura and I could not believe it. Lee Miller is another one of those people.
- American photographer, fashion model, WWII correspondent for Vogue and muse of Man Ray.
- Lee’s father, Theodore, introduced Elizabeth and her brothers to photography and he often used her as his model.
- Conde Nast, founder of Vogue, stopped Lee from walking in front of a car in Manhattan and consequently “discovered” Lee. He featured her on a cover of the magazine in March of 1927.
- 1929 found Lee off to Paris in hopes of apprenticing for Man Ray. She became not only apprentice, but lover and muse as well.
- Lee often photographed for Man Ray so that he could concentrate on painting, so many photos “taken by Man Ray” during that time were actually taken by Lee Miller.
- Involved in the Surrealist movement, Lee’s circle of friends included Picasso and Cocteau.
- Lee moved back to New York in 1932 and opened a photography studio but abandoned the business in 1934 when she married and moved to Egypt (where some of her best photographs were taken).
- Lee succumbed to ennui and returned to Paris 3 years later.
- During WWII, Lee lived in London and decided to pursue photographic documentation of the war. Simply put, she became a photojournalist.
- She documented the first use of napalm, the horror of concentration camps, dying children in Vienna, and execution and was photographed in Hitler’s bathtub (see above).
- Lee became a depressed alcoholic, had a baby, moved to England, became a gourmet cook, then became even more depressed (in part because of her then husband’s affair with a trapeze artist).
- She died in 1977 and her ashes were spread throughout her herb garden.
