On Sunday, as I walked through the Japanese Garden at Descanso, I heard several crows calling back and forth, what a racket. I looked up in the trees to investigate, first one crow landed on the branch then another and finally another. They were yammering away--like a group of gossipy old women or men for that matter.
When I took this photo, it reminded me of photographer Lee Miller's Rat Tails.
This photo is in homage to her art. I have been exploring Lee Miller's photography because our next Coffee, Tea and Books Book Club book is The Age of Light by
Whitney Scharer. The book is biofiction a subset of historical fiction. Lee Miller was Dada turned Surreal photographer Man Ray's muse, assistant and lover. She was astoundingly beautiful discovered by Conde Nast as a Vogue model. You may not have heard of her before but she is regarded as one of the most remarkable female icons of the 20th Century. Later she moved to Paris with the intent on becoming Man Ray's student where she was responsible for accidentally creating Solarization which would be Man Ray's signature photographic Method.
Raped at the age of 7, she contracted gonorrhea which is horrific enough for a 7 year old but the cure before antibiotics involved daily invasive treatment that lasted years. At about the same time, her father, a camera enthusiast, began regularly photographing her in the nude which continued well into adulthood. Her beauty was a currency in high demand but at what price, she says of herself: I looked like an angel but I was a fiend inside. She struggled for recognition and received some as one of
6 great female war correspondents during World War II. Perhaps you have seen her in Hitler's bathtub taking a bath or her haunting photos of Buchenwald. Explore her photos of that era in this article at OURS. After the war, Lee suffering from what would likely be diagnosed as PTSD medicated herself with alcohol. She died in 1977at the age of 70. After her death, her son discovered a treasure trove of her photography stowed away in the attic. It is due to his promotion of her work as a model and photographer that she has gained her rightful spot in the photographic history.
Age of Light, is a good story, but what I appreciated most about it, was the discovery of such an iconic photographer and the hours of research I have spent viewing her work and fleshing out the details of her story.