The Imperial War Museum was a
favourite haunt of the male members of our family for the past 20+ years,
partly because of the ‘boys’ toys’ aspect of militaria, but also because of the
displays’ ability to put flesh on the global conflicts of the 20th
century, politics red in tooth and claw.
Inside, the atrium - unsympathetically
re-modelled a few years ago - is stuffed with warplanes, tanks, artillery,
rockets and other machines designed solely to destroy and maim.
Thankfully, the permanent gallaries
provide space to reflect on various aspects of war, such as the moving display
on the history of the Holocaust, the Ashcroft medal gallery, the Secret War
displays that illustrate the extreme heroism of spies and guerillas, and the
make-do spirit of A Family in Wartime.
The Lee Williams exhibition
is on the third floor.
Frankly, before I went I knew very little about her apart from the fact that she was one of the very few female photographers who gained access to the Second World War theatres of conflict. There are many iconic phots from WW2 but I can recall only a handful of photographers: Eisenstaedt, Robert Capa, Joe Rosenthal, Dickey Chapelle…I’m flagging already! Before attending the exhibition, the only photo linked to Lee Williams that I remember was the one taken of her in Hitler’s bath – on the same day that the Fuhrer took his life.
Her war work, particularly
photographing the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and
Dachau, took a toll and she suffered from severe clinical depression after the
war. Lee and Roland moved to Chiddingly, East Sussex where she transitioned
into a successful gourmet cook before succumbing to cancer in 1977, aged 70.
Each visitor will take something memorable away from these black and white prints. For me, it was the variety of women’s work in the war years (including armed women in irregular Home Guard units), how fashion considerations impinged even on uniforms during wartime, and the memorable war-time portraits, such as the exhausted nurse at an evacuation hospital, the faces of refugees, collaborators, prisoners and unrepentant Germans.
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