In 1977, Lee Miller died in Sussex (England) at the age of 70 with a big secret behind him. His son, Antony Penrose, and his wife, still saddened by the sad news, arrived at the family home after many years and when they entered the attic they discovered, astonished, up to 60,000 negatives and 20,000 copies of photographs that they had never seen taken during the years. years of World War II. «My mother suffered post-traumatic stress from what she saw in the war and never wanted to talk about it. So when we discovered what was hidden in that attic, my life changed forever,” says Antony Penrose, visiting Barcelona to present the exhibition ‘Chronicles of War’ in the Fotonostrum space. The exhibition houses up to 124 snapshots from the 1990s. 40 when Miller, formerly a model and Man Ray’s apprentice, focused on photographing the havoc caused by World War II in all facets of life. So much so that she was one of only four women allowed to be a war correspondent and experience the heat of battle on the front line. “She was used to the glamorous life of fashion and artists, but here she put on the war uniform and let herself be soaked in the horror, the dirt and the grotesqueness of combat,” notes Penrose. Related news standard Si Lee Miller and Colita, photographic vacation in Palafrugell David Morán standard Si Irving Penn, between a Stradivarius and a scalpel Natividad PulidoThe exhibition, curated by Leonor Fernandes, thus takes us to London bombed at the beginning of the 40s. It also includes the photos she took for ‘Vogue’, where she documented the new role of women in the society of those years. And it ends with the snapshots he took from the front line of the battle of Saint-Malo and his later visits to Germany and the concentration camps. “There was no zoom at that time, so if you see the soldiers’ faces in close-up, she was centimeters away from them,” says Arni Bouhassane, Lee Miller’s granddaughter. Her photographs of the liberation are especially notable. of Paris and show how Miller could perfectly reflect the atmosphere of the moment, both its greatness and its miseries. “When Picasso saw her enter his workshop, he hugged her in surprise and said, what a joy, the first Allied soldier I have seen is you,” says Fernandes. Kate Winslett, in Hitler’s bathtub, in a sequence from ‘Lee’ ©Sky UK LtdThe exhibition, which can be seen until March 20, serves as a prologue or introduction to the March 7 premiere of the film ‘Lee’ starring Kate Winslet. “Many of the photographs that we see in the exhibition are recreated in detail in the film to contextualize the action and it is wonderful to be able to see them first here,” says Fernandes. Winslet’s work with the Lee Miller Archive, an institution founded and directed by Antony Penrose, and which houses the photographer’s archives, lasted up to 9 years. «She came to study the photographs and asked us questions to capture all the details, since these images contain both my mother’s personal story and that of the men and women who starred in her. “My mother documented each of them with writings,” says Penrose. After the Battle of Paris, 1944 Lee Miller/Lee Miller Archives The exhibition also wants to highlight the important role of women in World War II and their heroic efforts not to be left behind. separated from the official discourse. «Here we can see photographs that only a woman could have taken. For example, we see nurses in moments of relaxation, when they could rest for a second and relieve the tension of the moment. These women would have been self-conscious if it had been a photographer, but with Lee they could show who they really were and what they were feeling at that moment”; adds Bouhassane. Famous are the photographs that Miller took in Hitler’s apartment, when he was presumed dead in his Berlin bunker. Iconic, for example, is the self-portrait he took in the bathtub on that floor. “My grandmother wrote that it was a strange feeling, both comfortable and macabre because she was in the house of a person who you were glad was dead,” concludes Bouhassane.Picasso and Lee Miller in the artist’s studio on Rue des Grands-Augustins, Paris, 1944 Lee Miller/Lee Miller ArchivesIn 1972, Lee Miller arrived in Barcelona to carry out one of his last professional photographic works. At that time, practically retired, she had focused on surrealist gourmet cuisine, but the opportunity to return to her photographic work was too sweet. So he took his camera and arrived at Antoni Tàpies’ workshop to document his work, as he had done many years before with Picasso or Man Ray. His relationship with Barcelona went back a long way. Her husband and father of her son, Robert Penrose, covered the Civil War in 1936 and the two returned to Barcelona on multiple occasions, with a leading role in both the founding of the Picasso Museum and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation. «We had never before brought together his war photographs in Spain in an exhibition of this type. “She would be delighted,” concluded Penrose, who smiles as he says that the discovery of these photographs: “turned my mother’s death into a great family business.”
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