Lee Miller and Roland Penrose: Love Letters Bound in Gold Handcuffs

Ami Bouhassane, grand-daughter of photographer Lee Miller and Surrealist artist Roland Penrose presents, reads and shares their love letters, with guest speakers that contextualise the letters' content.

In the pre-digital age, before email and cell/mobiile phones, letters carried an importance that few who were not part of those times will understand.

The words on the pages of a love letter carry the nuances and emotions of love and desire, passion and anger in a deeply confidential way.

The urgency and the intimacy of the writers can be clearly felt in this collection of letters between Lee Miller, Photographer, and Roland Penrose, Surrealist Artist as they conduct their long-distance romance.

It begins with their meeting in Paris in 1937 and runs to 1939 when Lee Miller left her Egyptian husband Aziz Eloui Bey in Cairo and joined Roland Penrose in London at the start of World War 2. In this real-life romantic drama, the period and their connections give us a supporting cast that includes Dora Maar and Picasso, Nusch and Paul Eluard, Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst, Ady Fidelin and Man Ray.

These nearly three hundred pages of love letters show that as the relationship grew it produced and supported some of the world’s best loved art and photography. These have only been read by a handful of people since they were first written.

Guest Speakers: Antony Penrose (son of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose and Co-Director of Lee Miller Archives), Hilary Roberts (Independent Curator, formerly senior curator of photography at Imperial War Museums, London), Hussein Omar (lecturer on Modern global history, University college Dublin) and Sam Bourdouil

Lee Miller's letters read and Presented by Ami Bouhassane

Roland Penrose's letters read by Adam Grayson

Music composed by David Cullen

Series Producer: Tolly Robinson

Released to accompany the book of the letters of the same title that also contains many photographs by Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, in both colour and Black & White, that have not previously been published from the same period as the letters. We hope you enjoy this unique view into the lives of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose.

This series is the first podcast originally produced for the LoveLee supporters of the Lee Miller Archives on Patreon. Without whose support we would not be able to share this with you.

All content © Lee Miller Archives, England 2023. All rights reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk

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