Portrait of Lee Miller Asleep by Man Ray.
I like to think this is true that Man Ray shot this picture of his lover, model and great muse whilst she was in fact asleep. We have mentioned Lee (well both of them) before (and doubtless I will again!) and the great photographic model was also the first woman photojournalist inside Bergen-Belsen and Dachau.
She may well have suffered what we now call PTSD from her childhood sexual abuse to her experiences of the aftermath of the Holocaust witnessed at first hand. She did not have an easy life adjusting and drank alcoholically to try to cope with the trauma. Many of her photographs inside the death camps have still not been seen as they portray images too horrifying for publication.
I am proud to have met her and clasped her hand at the ICA Man Ray retrospective with her then husband Sir Roland Penrose. She remains one of my all time heroines. I like to think she is dreaming happily here.
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