In Venice photos of the artist working with Man Ray
The now iconic image with Lee Miller immersed in the bathtub of Hitler’s apartment in Munich, supreme surrealist gesture, act of justice, human purification, against what he had seen in Dachau and Buchenwald, where he had entered with the Allies, is in the last room, "Photographing the horror".
It is the final piece of the exhibition dedicated to the American photographer, the relationship first of student then of equality, love and friendship, with Man Ray, set up at Palazzo Franchetti, in Venice, until April 10 next.
The photo that portrays her, taken by a colleague, David Scherman, to whom he had given his camera, is one of the signs, along with an image taken of a model with arms raised with the technique of solarization - almost an answer to a mannequin-woman of the time “master” made years earlier - to understand the spirit of willful, absolute freedom that has accompanied his multiple “lives”.
Lee Miller was a model, photographer, muse, first woman war reporter to document the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps, and then left the photographic experience. Suzanna, the wife of her only son, Anthony Penrose, accidentally discovered in the attic, in 1977, a few months after the death of the photographer, over 60 thousand negatives, documents, magazines, which led to the rediscovery of Lee Miller, of a life marked by successes but also strong traumas.
The exhibition, entitled “LEE MILLER MAN RAY. FASHION-LOVE-WAR”, curated by Victoria Noel-Johnson, organized by Cms.Cultura, in collaboration with ACP-Palazzo Franchetti, trough 140 photos of the two protagonists, some objects of art and video, also intends to offer - it was remembered - “the right recognition to Lee Miller, pioneer of surrealism in photography, placing it on an equal footing with Man Ray, whose work tended to obscure it both in life and in the years to come”.
Proceeding by themes and with a chronological path, through eight sections, the exhibition opens with the photographer model in New York from 1927 and muse two years later of Ray in Paris,
Proceeding by themes and with a chronological path, through eight sections, the exhibition opens with the photographer model in New York from 1927 and muse two years later of Ray in Paris, where she had gone to learn photography.