Whitney Scharer - The Age of Light

Lee pauses in front of a print she remembers well, her solarized face in profile, a thin black line separating her skin from the white background. A small placard hangs next to the print, and Lee leans in close and squints to read it. SOLARIZATION, A JOINT DISCOVERY BETWEEN ARTISTS MAN RAY AND LEE MILLER, IS A PHENOMENON IN PHOTOGRAPHY IN WHICH THE IMAGE RECORDED ON A NEGATIVE OR ON A PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT IS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY REVERSED IN TONE. Lee reaches out and rubs her thumb over the words, leaves a smear on the plastic cover, and then smears it more when she tries to polish it away. A joint discovery. Artists Man Ray and Lee Miller. How much those words would once have mattered. All she gave up because she didn’t hear them. How little meaning they hold for her now.

Lee gathers herself and moves to the next room. In it there is only one painting. Gigantic, eight feet in length, it hangs at eye level, vibrant and sumptuous. OBSERVATORY TIME—THE LOVERS she knows the placard says. It is like viewing a memory forgotten and then half remembered. The lips lying like bodies one on top of the other, spent and sated. Where did that girl go, the one who surrendered herself fully to sensation, to her lover, so close it wasn’t clear where her body ended and his began? Lee wants that back too, that feeling.

The rest of the exhibit is a blur. Lee wanders through room after room of paintings and sculptures from later in Man’s career. A room devoted to his time in California, another to the portraits he took in Europe in the 1950s. Lee has seen most of them in journals over the years; she has followed his career and so has Roland.

Before too long Lee reaches the end of the exhibit. She stands at the exit for a while, not yet capable of venturing out into the noisy mess of the rest of the museum. There is a bench against the wall, and Lee sinks onto it with relief. She’ll just rest her feet before she goes home.

Lee is sitting like this twenty or so minutes later, eyes closed, when she hears a noise behind her, the squeak of rubber on the hardwood floor. Someone in a wheelchair is rolling into the room. And then as the person gets closer there it is: a voice, his voice, gravelly and thin now, but still familiar, a voice she wasn’t able to recall until she hears it. She draws the deepest breath she can and turns to meet him.

“Lee?” Man says.

What passes between them will be just a memory. There are no pictures of it.

Lee Miller first captured my attention when I went to an art exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, called Man Ray / Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism. Her work on display was incredible; her life, even more so. Yet in all my art history courses at school, it was Man Ray I’d heard of, not Lee Miller. After leaving the exhibit, I dove into two years of research before writing what became The Age of Light.

My fascination with Lee sprang from images—images of her, and images taken by her. Her confident gaze in her very first cover image for Vogue in 1927, her defiant stare in photos taken by her father, the love in her eyes as she looked up at Man, her utter transformation into a hardened war reporter. The images were access points into novel scenes, and remained touchstones for me as I was writing and revising the book. The novel, then, is the story behind the images. It is a work of fiction, and even though I absorbed facts from many excellent biographies and historical texts while I was writing, these characters are products of my imagination.

Historical fiction is a unique genre, and when a writer is writing about real people, the process comes with its own set of expectations and rules. Though I worked to render history authentically—especially geography, chronology, and other historical details—I chose to experiment and to invent scenes and actions, as long as they felt genuine to who the characters were, both as they lived and in my fictional representation. Above all, my goal in writing this book was to present Lee as the complicated woman she was: beautiful and talented, of course, but also flawed and fragile, and it was more important to me to get this right than to stay entirely inside the lines of written history.

For further reading about the real lives of Man Ray and Lee Miller, I highly recommend Carolyn Burke’s biography Lee Miller: A Life. It is a book that I turned to again and again for research, and it does a wonderful job of exploring Lee’s complex history. Man Ray: American Artist, by Neil Baldwin, and Man Ray’s autobiography, Self Portrait, are good starting points for information on his incredible life and work. I include here a short list of other sources I consulted over the years. Any of these books would be a great place to learn more about the characters and the period. And, of course, there is Man’s and Lee’s art, which I hope inspires you as much as it does me.

Further Reading

Baldwin, Neil. Man Ray: American Artist. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2000.

Burke, Carolyn. Lee Miller: A Life. New York: Knopf, 2005.

Cahun, Claude. Disavowals, or Cancelled Confessions. Boston: MIT Press, 2008.

Conekin, Becky E. Lee Miller in Fashion. New York: Monacelli Press, 2013.

Flanner, Janet. Paris Was Yesterday, 1925–1939. New York: Viking Press, 1972.

Klein, Mason. Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

Penrose, Antony. The Lives of Lee Miller. London: Thames and Hudson, 1988.

Penrose, Antony, ed. Lee Miller’s War. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1992.

Prodger, Phillip, with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan and Antony Penrose. Man Ray / Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism. London: Merrell Publishers, 2011.

Ray, Man. Self Portrait. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.

Roberts, Hilary. Lee Miller: A Woman’s War. London: Thames and Hudson, 2015.

It’s said that writing is a solitary act, but this book would not exist were it not for the guidance, encouragement, and belief of the following people. It is such a pleasure to be able to express my gratitude for their support.

It was my dream to work with my agent, Julie Barer, long before she emailed me from the sky on her way to Japan, and she has turned out to be even more brilliant and wonderful than I imagined she would be. I owe her and everyone at The Book Group a thousand thanks. Special thanks as well to the unflappable Nicole Cunningham.

Huge thanks to my amazing team at Little, Brown, including Karen Landry, Sabrina Callahan, copyeditor Nell Beram, Alexandra Hoopes, and my superb editor, Judy Clain, who is a joy to work with and whose insight and wisdom have made me a better writer and this a better book. Thanks also to the wonderful people at Picador UK, especially Kish Widyaratna and my lovely editor, Francesca Main, who offered invaluable suggestions at the macro and micro levels. Heartfelt thanks to Jenny Meyer, Caspian Dennis, and Gray Tan, foreign agents extraordinaire: I still get goose bumps when I think of my book being translated into other languages and read across the pond! To my foreign publishers: our relationship is just beginning, but I look forward to getting to know you and thank you so much for believing in my work.

In some ways, my writing life began when I joined my writing group, the Chunky Monkeys, and I couldn’t feel luckier to know such an awe-inspiring group of people. Chip Cheek, Jennifer De Leon, Calvin Hennick, Sonya Larson, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Celeste Ng, Adam Stumacher, Grace Talusan, and Becky Tuch: thank you for reading countless drafts, providing world-class feedback, making me laugh, giving me pep talks, and proving to me that hard work pays off.

A special shout-out to dear friends and superstar writers Jenna Blum and Kate Woodworth, for holding me accountable and cheering me on with Bitmojis and Manhattans.

Boundless gratitude to the talented writers I’m lucky to call friends, who have helped me with this book in countless ways: Christopher Castellani, Ron MacLean, Lisa Borders, Michelle Seaton, Sari Boren, Sean Van Deuren, Jaime Clarke, Mary Cotton, Tom Champoux, Alison Murphy, Chuck Garabedian, Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, Michelle Hoover, Karen Day, Stuart Horwitz, Crystal King, Cathy Elcik, and probably more people whose names I will wish I had remembered. Thank you for inspiring me.

I’m convinced that Boston has the best writing community in the nation. I spent ten happy years working at Grub Street, an organization that managed to feel like a home. I also love being a part of the Charrettes, led by the wonderful Daphne Kalotay; the Spitballers, who make brainstorming sessions productive, collaborative, and fun; and the Arlington Author Salon, which has been a joy to help organize and has gotten me better acquainted with the lovely Anjali Mitter Duva, Amy Yelin, Marjan Kamali, and Andrea Nicolay. I’m grateful as well for the financial support of two Boston institutions: the Somerville Arts Council and the St. Botolph Club Foundation.

I will be forever grateful for the time and space to write I’ve been granted at residencies and in the homes of generous friends. The two weeks I spent at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts were the most productive weeks I’ve ever had, and I value the friendship and inspiration I found there with other artists, especially John Aylward, Sarah McColl, and Jennifer Lunden. Thank you to Mo Hanley for sharing her Cape Cod home; to Alex Reisman for transforming her Berkshires house in Rowe, Massachusetts, into a writing retreat where we worked and laughed in equal measure; and to Arthur Golden for trusting me to take care of Missy at Salt Meadows while I finished my (fifth?) draft. Closer to home, I thank God for Diesel Cafe, Kickstand Cafe, and Caffè Nero, which have fueled my revisions with endless Americanos and served as havens where I can always look forward to bumping into someone I know.