Queen of Reinvention

A Queen of Reinvention – not unlike Madonna – Lee Miller went through a number of amazing transformations in her life. But when she became a war correspondent in 1942, she really found her calling. “I had thought and burned with ideas for years and suddenly found a peg on which to hang them,” she wrote. Tackling the job with her own unique mix of glamour and grit, Lee insisted on getting fitted for her dark-green uniform on Savile Row. How proud she was every time the French mistook her a ‘femme soldat’! With her camera around her neck and notebook in hand, Lee created very personal dispatches that always hit the spot, from thrilling combat reports to intimate accounts of the war’s effect on everyday life.

And she was fearless, becoming the only female journalist to see combat, ‘exposing herself to machine gun, mortar and artillery fire, as well as bombing’ according to a colleague. A French nurse who recognized Lee as ‘the Surrealists’ blonde Venus’ wrote: “Now this living statue was among us, extraordinarily beautiful, against a background of ruins, in her strict khaki uniform.” Lee’s return was triumphant, but something was missing. “I seem to have lost my grip or enthusiasm when the war ended,” she wrote in a letter to a friend. However hard she tried; she would never quite find it back. It was as if, by taking off her uniform, Lee had slipped out of the only role that really fit her like a glove.