Farley Farm House: Home of the Surrealists.

 

The Sussex home of Lee Miller, photographer, and Sir Roland Penrose, artist, is open on Sundays for guided tours.  There is a gallery, currently showing an exhibition of Lee Miller’s photographs: “Lee Miller’s War”, and the house is home to many of Penrose’s artworks.
http://www.farleyfarmhouse.co.uk/

Lee Miller was a model for Man Ray and insisted he teach her photography.  She was involved in early work on solarisation.  She took photographs of London in the Blitz and after D-day worked as a war correspondent in Europe, where she was one of the first journalists to enter the concentration camp at Dachau.

Lee Miller’s War

The exhibition of monochrome prints ranges from fashion to the horrors of Dachau.  I select two for comment:

“Gestapo Prisoner, Now Liberated”

http://www.leemiller.co.uk/media/J1ddXe8_UujVXKgDKKvEQQ..a?ts=r05Z-vXElszlYVstIRFtLA..a

This shows an interior with heavy wooden double doors to the outside, defended by a metal grille.  In the foreground, cooking pots and a ladle are in sharp focus.  Behind these, nearer the doors, a woman sits huddled, a heavy coat draped cloak-like over her.  Her hair’s in a scarf, knotted on top.  She holds on her knees two cardboard boxes.  Light falling through the open door silhouettes her face, which is not in focus, yet she can be seen to be staring blankly off, as if remembering.

We are left to imagine the horrors she has experienced, as we imagine the details of her blurred face.  The cooking utensils and other items make this a mundane place, where this victim has been temporarily ‘parked’ while her disposal is determined.  She seems free to leave through the open door, but she does not.  Perhaps she cannot believe it; maybe her declared freedom is just further cruelty.  A powerful image that shows that a message can be conveyed by the subject not being in focus.

“The collaborators, women found guilty of Nazi collaboration”

http://www.leemiller.co.uk/media/POZtWCSYrED2SPg3cg5Dhw..a?ts=ZNVB4FiOFp3B3kI4iZDgUA..a

The caption card reads:

Women with shaved heads, Rennes, France, 1944. Women who had had German boyfriends were accused of collaboration by vengeful civilians and had their heads shaved in punishment. Lee Miller wrote; "They were stupid little girls - not intelligent enough to feel ashamed". Later she wrote that she found the process "...both shaming and shameful".

The image is a close view, looking up from chest height, of three shaven-headed young women, looking anxious, with a scornful crowd behind and beside them.  They look like boys; their tonsure has robbed them not just of dignity, but apparently also of gender.  A wedge of sky is delimited by a building in the background and the figure of a man in the foreground.  It points down into the picture at the white blouse worn by one of the women, leading the gaze to circulate round their three pale faces.  They all look towards this man, who is anonymous because his face is in shadow and he’s looking away from the camera, though he seems to block their escape.

 

The House

Many of Roland Penrose's paintings and collages are on display in the house, together with works by Picasso and Man Ray.  It was a thrill to see works hanging on the walls I'd only seen in books before.  He spent a lot of effort promoting the work of other Surrealist artists rather than promoting his own.  I find Penrose's three paintings of Lee Milller: First View, 1947; Pregnant Portrait, 1947; and The Flight of Time, 1949; particularly beautiful.