Lee Miller: A Woman’s War
One thing I’ve missed over the last year has been “browsing with serendipity” in the library stacks.* My mother brought the phrase home from one of her library science classes a million years ago and it perfectly describes the feeling of finding a book that you didn’t know existed—and consequently didn’t know you needed—snuggled up next to the book you were looking for. As far as I’m concerned, it’s everyday magic.
Recently I experienced that same magic while browsing the on-line catalog for the Pritzker Military Library. I don’t remember what book I was looking for. I don’t even remember if I found it. But one thing the catalog turned up was Lee Miller: A Woman’s War by Hilary Roberts, photography curator at the Imperial War Museum in London.** It wasn’t directly related to what I was working on, but it looked interesting, so I added it to the list of books to have pulled. Boy, am I glad I did! It it not just a thing of beauty, it also addressed a number of issues that I’m working through in the current book.
This is the sum total of what I knew about Lee Miller before I read the book: 1) She was a photojournalist in WWII 2) She was a supermodel for Vogue before she was a photographer 3) She was involved with surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray for several years 4) Another photographer took a picture of her bathing in Hitler’s tub after the Allies reached Berlin.*** All of those things were true. (Though it turns out the bathtub picture was taken in his apartment in Munich, not Berlin.) But they were only a small part of the story.
Roberts provides the reader with a brief, compelling biography of Miller that centers on her work as a war correspondent and photojournalist for British Vogue. **** But Lee Miller: A Woman’s War is, at heart, a very smart picture book. Roberts uses Miller’s photographs (and photographs of Miller) to explore the photographer’s career and, more importantly the woman-based vision of World War II that she created for Vogue. She includes
- Fashion photographs set against bombed-out buildings in London
- Portraits of women at work in improvised offices in London*****
- Photographs of British women in uniform getting the job done
- Heartbreaking and heartwarming images of women in wartime Europe and of women in Europe shortly after the end of the war. (The photograph on the cover is a picture of Flight Lieutenant Anna Leska, a serving officer of the Polish air force who was one of three Polish women who served as a ferry pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary.)
The result is a powerful portrait of women in the war.
I liked the book well enough that I intend to buy a copy of my own. In the meantime, my library copy bristles with yellow sticky notes and my brain is buzzing with story ideas and research questions.
Browsing with serendipity works its magic once more.
*That said, the ability to pick up books from the Chicago Public Library and the Pritzker Military Library has been a lifeline for me over the past year. (One of the reference librarians at the Pritzker even mailed books to me.) I haven’t been able to get everything I want, but I’ve been able to get enough to keep moving on more than one project. God bless librarians!
**On my travel bucket list for the future when travel is possible once more. Are you listening, universe?
***I must say, the thought of that makes my skin crawl. On the other hand, I haven’t been traveling with the army for months without the luxury of regular baths. In her shoes I might have been less squeamish about Hitler cooties, too.
****And now I understand why a woman’s magazine would have a war correspondent. One questions ticked off the research list.
*****Including a photograph of the all-female staff of British Vogue working in the basement of their Bond Street offices, for a feature titled “Here is Vogue, in Spite of All!”
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On Monday, it’s back to Women’s History Month, with Three Questions and an Answer with historian Tiffany Sippial, talking about Cuban revolutionary Celia Sánchez Manduley. (Can you say “woman warrior”?)
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If you’re interested in the process of writing and thinking about history, you might enjoy my newsletter, which comes out roughly every two weeks. The content is totally different from History in the Margins. In recent months I’ve discussed cliffhangers, the odd experience of reading history “in real time” in the form of old newspapers, the question of “first-naming” the subject of a biography, and , well, women photojournalists. (You can tell where my mind’s been lately.) If that sounds like your chocolate Easter bunny, you can subscribe here: http://eepurl.com/dIft-b .(When you subscribe, you’ll get a link for a very cool downloadable timeline of the Roman emperors and the women who fought against them or supported them, which I created with the people behind The Exploress podcast.)
Talking About Women’s History: A Whole Bunch of Questions and an Answer with Allison Lange
Allison Lange is a historian who explores the stories that pictures tell about the intersection of gender and power in U.S. history. She writes, gives talks, teaches and curates exhibitions dealing with American women’s history. She is an associate profession of history at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and served as Historian for the United States Congress’s Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission.
Her first book, Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement, focuses on the ways that women’s voting rights activists and their opponents used images to define gender and power. She is current working on a book that situates contemporary iconic pictures within the context of historical ones to demonstrate how today’s visual debates about gender and politics are shaped by those of the past. As she puts it “For me, Instagram isn’t just a social media site it’s a research data base.”
Take it away, Allison:
Your work focuses on the historical use of images in debates about gender, power and politics. What do we learn when we use images as more than just illustrations?
Just like today’s images, historical images are not objective. The creators had a point of view, so it’s important for us to critically analyze them the same way we analyze texts. Images can reflect and reinforce ideas about social constructs like gender, but they can also establish new ones. By analyzing images, we gain a more complex understanding of the media that people in the past encountered and the ways it shaped their world.
Did a particular inspire you to work on images in the women’s suffrage movement?
The photographs of suffragists picketing the White House in 1917 are iconic. When I was considering research topics, I wondered why the pictures from this series were taken. Why did a professional photography studio go to the White House? What were these photographs for? Who saw these photographs in 1917? These photographs turned out to be revolutionary suffrage images that were central to keeping the fight for suffrage in the news and forcing lawmakers to address the issue.
How do visual debates about gender and politics continue today?
We encounter visual debates about gender and politics almost constantly. For example, Instagram is a fascinating place to examine the ways that we represent ourselves to a public audience. While artists, editors, and publishers had more power over someone’s image in the 19th century, today public figures have slightly more control over the images they share with the public. Yet, in some ways little has changed. Popular media often still imagines feminists and female political leaders as masculine revolutionaries, and women in politics still work especially hard to make themselves appear approachable, feminine, and–often–motherly.
In addition to writing about women’s history, you have curated several exhibits for a number of museums. How does telling history in a visual or multi-media form differ from writing history for the page?
Writing brief explanatory label texts is like a puzzle. I want scholars to read them and see the story’s complexities, but I also want a group of middle schoolers to grasp the basics. It’s a challenge to fit both stories into a few sentences! I also rely on the artifacts to help tell the history. The process of writing these texts has taught me to write clearly and concisely, which is helpful for writing a book too.
What work of women’s history have you read lately that you loved? (Or for that matter, what work of women’s history have you loved in any format?)
I love work that makes women’s history accessible to a general audience. For example, the American Girls podcast hosted by historians Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney provides critical analysis of the beloved book series and its representation of the past in combination with commentary on popular culture. I’m also really enjoying Dickinson, a show about the poet Emily Dickinson. It celebrates her poetry and is a wonderful reminder that women in the mid-19th century had fun!
If you could pick one woman from history to put in every high school history textbook, who would it be?
Mary Church Terrell. No question! As Alison Parker’s amazing new book Unceasing Militant shows, Terrell was born enslaved and grew up to be a leading activist in the movements for civil and women’s rights. Plus, she loved fashion and had a fascinating, complex personal life.
Who are some of your favorite authors working in women’s history today?
There are so many extraordinary authors! It’s impossible to choose just one. Lately I’ve been amazed by the wealth of new scholarship on the history of women’s voting rights, including wonderful books by Cathleen Cahill, Kimberly Hamlin, Martha Jones, Laura Prieto, Wendy Rouse, Lisa Tetrault, and so many more.
What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical women?
I love researching historical women. Sometimes learning about their lives can be frustrating and even infuriating, but it can also be inspiring to see what they accomplished even under difficult circumstances.
Do you think Women’s History Month is important and why?
Until we have more women’s history in school curriculums, Women’s History Month remains important. State standards require students to learn little about the lives of historical women. Women’s History Month programs provide important opportunities for engagement with female figures.
How do you define women’s history?
Women’s history is necessarily broad. The field overlaps with every other historical field, from the history of families and labor activism to politics and the institution of slavery. Social constructions of gender are central to women’s history. Those constructions are constantly changing, as is the field and everything it encompasses.
A question for Pamela: I’d love to know: what is your current favorite women’s history content–fiction or non-fiction book, movie, tv show, podcast, etc–right now?
There is so much good stuff out there right now that it’s hard to chose. I’m loving Sonia Purnell’s A Woman of No Importance and Judy Batalion’s The Light of Days. (I’m immersed in World War II right now.) As far as podcasts go, it’s hard to beat The What’s Her Name podcast, the Exploress and the Dead Ladies Show. Ask me again tomorrow and you might get different answers.
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Want to know more about Allison and her work?
Check out her website: http://www.allisonklange.com/
Follow her on Twitter: @aklange1
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Tomorrow it will be business as usual here on the Margins with a blog post from me. But we’ve still got more people talking about women’s history from a lot of different angles next week. Don’t touch that dial!
Talking About Women’s History: Ten (!) Questions and an Answer with Mary Cronk Farrell
Mary Cronk Farrell got carried away and answered LOTS of the questions I gave her. I wasn’t surprised. Enthusiasm and energy are two of the qualities I associate with her and her work.
Mary is the author of books for young people and a former journalist with a passion for stories of little-known women who faced adversity and prevailed through fortitude, hard work and courage. Her books earned starred reviews and are named on lists for the Notable Social Studies Books for Young People, Bank Street College Best Children’s Books, NY Public Library Best Books for Teens and the Amelia Bloomer Project. Her work has been nominated for the Washington State Book Award, the California Reading Association Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, and the Western Writer’s Spur award for best fiction for young people.
Take it away, Mary:
You write about forgotten/historical women for younger readers. Why do you think it is important to tell these stories today
Telling women’s stories is critical if we’re to stop the machine of history that has ignored, devalued and denied women’s contributions. Without these stories we don’t have a full, in-focus, right-side-up picture of the past. And without such an understanding of the past, we can’t take meaningful strides toward justice for women. Until women’s gifts and contributions are valued equally with men’s we will continue down many of the destructive paths we’ve taken before.
Stories of individual women are important because they give us different types of role models, and demonstrate different ways that women can approach obstacles in order to accomplish their goals. I have learned so much from the women I’ve written about: the power of leadership and grit from women prisoners-of-war, the strength of unity and collaboration from a labor organizer, the courage to step beyond your comfort zone from black women who dared join the segregated US army in WWII, and self-confidence and persistence from a young woman who followed U.S. Marines into some of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.
Learning the details of historical women’s lives empowers us, provides doors and windows to better understand ourselves and others. These women give us hope to engage with the circumstances of our own lives and strengthen our faith in the human spirit and our own capabilities. Lastly, telling women’s stories honors and gives credit where credit has long been overdue.
You write both historical fiction and historical non-fiction. Is your research process different for fiction than for non-fiction?
For both historical fiction and nonfiction, my research is very much the same in terms of process. But when writing a true story I am much more meticulous about sources, details and actual quotes. What I love about research is the same for both, and that is the discovery of details that help bring history to life, interesting information that help me paint a picture.
For example, I discovered quite revealing details about the facilities, where in 1941 after the fall of Corregidor in the Philippines, the Japanese imprisoned US army nurses For some 300 prisoners there were three showers, five sinks and five toilet stalls from which the doors had been removed. On the wall, a sign in huge letters said. IF YOU WANT PRIVACY, CLOSE YOUR EYES.” These few, precise details help us imagine a great deal about the women’s day to day lives in captivity.
When did you first become interested in women’s history? What sparked that interest?
I think it was the courage and fortitude of women that sparked my interest at a young age. I remember from when I was very young, a story my mother read to me about Saint Frances of Cabrini, who I’m named after. As a child Frances played with her brother by a stream where they made little leaf boats and sent them off downstream to the sea, if I remember correctly after all these years. (And possibly the story itself was not exactly true.)
Frances was determined that one day she would bravely sail across the sea and spend her life helping others. Which she did. She founded a religious order, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and in 1889, she sailed from Italy where she was born to the United States. She spent her life building schools, hospitals and orphanages. I never imagined joining a religious order, but at some point I realized the opportunity they presented to women. Within the bounds of their orders, many religious women throughout the ages had the freedom to pursue full-time careers, every bit as accomplished as many men. Now I’ve totally gotten off the topic. But I’ve always been drawn to stories of women who are fearless, go after what they want and don’t give up.
How would you describe what you write?
I write about little-known women in American History whose incredible courage will amaze you. Every one of my books has started with a discovery, the unexpected find of a historical person or persons that I think everyone should know about. Often, I’m shocked it isn’t being taught in school. I get so excited about how and why they did what they did that shouting from the rooftops does not seem like a silly, threadbare cliché.
What work of women’s history have you read lately that you loved? (Or for that matter, what work of women’s history have you loved in any format?)
I recently read about Gerda Pohorylle, a young German Jewish woman who escaped Germany in 1933 when Hitler became chancellor. In Paris, she met another young Jew teaching himself photography. They collaborated and she suggested they change their Jewish surnames to increase opportunities with international newspapers. She became Gerda Taro and her friend Robert Capa, who would later become the world’s most famous war photographer. Covering the Spanish Civil War, Gerda became one of the first women working in the field of photojournalism, and unfortunately, she was the first to die on the frontlines of war.
If you could pick one woman from history to put in every high school history textbook, who would it be?
Too difficult to choose, but I’ll say Gerda Taro because I only recently learned of her. She was only 26 years old when she was killed, so I think young people would relate to her. In this time of fake news, I believe it is so important for us to realize that for combat journalists, the truth is worth dying for.
What’s your next book about and when will we see it?
My next book is Close-up on War: The Story of Pioneering Photojournalist Catherine Leroy in Vietnam. The cover was just released in February, which is very exciting, but it will not be published until 2/2/22.
As the title says, it’s the story of Catherine Leroy, a combat photographer who started her career in Vietnam.
When Catherine flew to Vietnam in 1966, the United States was rapidly escalating its war against communism there. Though equal rights and equal pay for women were still considered radical in America, she dared to take on the heavily male-dominated world of war photography.
Bold, determined, and cool under fire, Catherine accompanied marines into the jungle, crawled through rice paddies, and parachuted into combat despite being told she didn’t belong in a “man’s world.”
Scores of photojournalists from around the world risked their lives reporting on the long, costly, and divisive war. For the bloodiest years, 1966-1969, Catherine remained the only woman photographer.
Neither capture by the enemy nor shrapnel wounds kept Catherine from getting her pictures. Her raw photos showed the brotherhood and compassion of soldiers, the anguish of civilians, and the humanity of the enemy. Published in America’s leading newspapers and magazines, Catherine’s images forced Americans to confront the human cost of war.
Based on Catherine’s personal letters from Vietnam, and including her most powerful photos, this biography is a gripping look at the Vietnam War through the eyes of an extraordinary woman whose legacy of compassion endures today.
What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical women?
I love researching historical women and find it exciting to discover facts I didn’t know before. What I find challenging is all the detail work that goes into writing a nonfiction book, for instance, my new book included 23 manuscript pages of endnotes. I had many different kinds of sources and had to continually look up in the Chicago Manuel of Style to make sure I had the commas in the right place, italics where they needed to be, and so on. Then there was a different style to adhere to writing up all these same sources for the bibliography. I honestly just about lose my mind doing that kind of work.
Do you think Women’s History Month is important and why?
Mostly, I think it’s fun and interesting. I love learning about women I haven’t heard of and the impact they made in history.
What was the most surprising thing you’ve found doing historical research for your work?
To this day, I think the most surprising thing was discovering some eighty American military nurses had been captured POW by the Japanese in the early days of WWII. They remained in prison camps until the last months of the war and barely survived. I feel honored to have had the chance to write their story, and some of the most memorable and meaningful moments I’ve had as an author was talking with sons and daughters of those women.
My question for Pamela is: Why was it important for you to write about women warriors? This seems a fascinating topic for study, but what drew you personally to commit so much of yourself to writing this book?
I’ve been fascinated by the concept of women warriors ever since I was a nerdy kid who read every biography of famous women I could get my hands on and who regularly blew her allowance on comic books with female super heroes. Like a lot of young girls, I was hungry for historical role models that told me it was okay to be smart, mouthy, opinionated, or different. Looking at women warriors as role models, whether they are historical or fictional, takes that one step further. They’re not just smart, they’re strong. They’re not just opinionated, they’re brave. (I think one reason so many young girls are fascinated by Joan of Arc is that she was a teenage girl who made powerful people listen to her. That’s heady stuff if you feel like you can’t make yourself heard.)
But the real trigger for me came in 1988, when Antonia Fraser published Warrior Queens. Fraser’s book not only introduced me to women I’d never heard of before, but also to a new idea: that women “fought, literally fought, as a normal part of the army in far more epochs and far more civilizations than is generally appreciated.” Once I was aware that women warriors had existed in many times and places, it seemed like I ran across references to them everywhere. I began collecting their stories with no particular purpose in mind. After a couple of decades, that file was pretty fat and I decided it was time to share.
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Want to know more about Mary Cronk Farrell and her work?
Check out her website: www.MaryCronkFarrell.com
Read her latest blog post
Follow her on Instagram: marycronkfarrell
Follow her on Facebook: Author Mary Cronk Farrell
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Come back tomorrow for all the questions and an answer with historian Allison Lange, talking about women’s suffrage, women’s history, and the power of images.
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If you’re interested in the process of writing and thinking about history, you might enjoy my newsletter, which comes out roughly every two weeks. The content is totally different from History in the Margins. In recent months I’ve discussed forgotten female photojournalists, cliffhangers, the odd experience of reading history “in real time” in the form of old newspapers, and the question of “first-naming” the subject of a biography. If that sounds like your bottle of beer, you can subscribe here: http://eepurl.com/dIft-b (When you subscribe, you’ll get a link for a very cool downloadable timeline of the Roman emperors and the women who fought against them or supported them, which I created with the people behind The Exploress podcast.)