Antony Penrose, son of photographer and Vogue war correspondent Lee Miller, talks about her success on both sides of the camera and the enduring images that resulted from her unique way of seeing.
Two genres shaped the life of Lee Miller, Surrealism and the world of fashion. They informed each other and were both central to the way she saw the world. Her career as a fashion model began with an accidental encounter with Conde Nast, the proprietor of Vogue who put her on his front cover a few weeks before her 20th birthday. She became the model for Lepape, Steichen, Genthe, Man Ray, Hoyningen Heune, Horst, Picasso and Penrose – later to be her husband. She emerged as a fashion photographer in her own right, metamorphosing into a war correspondent and finally a combat photographer before returning to her role as a distinctive and witty photographer for Vogue in the post war years. This presentation shows how Lee Miller’s success on both sides of the camera has left us with enduring images that result from her unique way of seeing.
Contains some wartime images which may be disturbing.
Antony Penrose
Director of the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection. Antony Penrose is the son of the American photographer Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, surrealist artist and biographer of Picasso,
Miró, Man Ray and Tàpies. He grew up in Farley Farm House, the old Sussex farmhouse his parents used to occupy in the village of Chiddingly. Life was a perpetual arts congress where British artists like Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Richard Hamilton, John Craxton, and Kenneth Armitage mixed with leading figures from Europe such as Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Jean Dubuffet and where Picasso visited in 1950. Antony has written numerous books, articles and two plays on the subject of his parents and their associates. He lecturers widely and is known as a curator of photography, an artist and film maker in his own right.
Thursday 28 July 2016, 6pm–8pm