UK - Harassment of photographers nothing new

[chris000]

Lee Miller a threat

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7919000/7919211.stm


It seems we have not progressed much at all.

 

[principe azul]

thanks, Chris, I'm a fan of her work

 

[peterm1]

Lee Miller is one of my personal heros. Who could ever forget that great photo of her in Hitler's bathtub For those of you who do not know this story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2002/oct/26/art.photography

and the photo itself

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hab3045/2197296879/

Miller's life was somewhat traumatic and chaotic but very picturesque as befits a great (well great-ish) artist. Certainly she was a personality and at one time, a celebrity in her own right.......A lover, protege and muse of the great surrealist photographer ManRay she went on to a successful career, initally as a model and fashion photographer and then in WW2 as a photo journalist. In some ways she is in my mind a female Robert Capa. Unruled and unruly she marched to the beat of her own drum. Unlike Capa (who died in 1954reporting the Indo China war - which later became another spot of unpleasantness known as the Vietnam War) she lived to a good age (in New Zealand) despite her deteriorating state of mind. Miller was one of those rare women of the first half of last centrury who were before their time and lived their lives as if it was already the 1980s. (Although even today she could not be regarded as being an average person.)

I love Cecil Beaton's description of her appearance with close cropped hair in the above article "like a sun-kissed goat boy from the Appian Way" although I fear this says more about him than it does about her.

One supposes that to the xenephobic governments of the 1940s (and beyond) one such as her - a free spirit who lived by her own rules - would be essentially untrustworthy and demanding of close survellance quite apart from her pernicious habit of taking pictures of things.............!

Incidentally I dont really wish to hijack this thread but threads have a life of their own so can I ask a question for fun. On the subject of CAPA can I pose a little quiz question? What was his famous advice for photogrpahers whose photos were not good enough?