The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer
The Age of Light is a fictionalized story of Lee Miller, a model, photographer, and writer who lived from 1907 to 1977. In 1929, She met Man Ray, a noted artist and photographer in Paris. She had come from the United States, where she had done extensive American Vogue and Vanity Fair modeling. Her father had been the photographer for many of the nude photos that had made her famous. She has a great desire to become a photographer and settles for being Man Ray’s assistant.
While working as Man Ray’s assistant, their relationship soon changes to that of lovers. Throughout the relationship, Man Ray and Lee have mutual love and affection for each other, and sometimes the descriptions of their feelings seem more like lust. Man Ray and Lee create phenomenal paintings and photographs and enjoy artistic innovations by melding their creative artistic energy. In many ways, Man Ray demonstrates his need to exert power over Lee rather than empower her to be an artist based on her own talents. Lee becomes a peripheral part of Man Ray’s social network, but there are elements of the art scene in Paris that she is excluded from. Lee has her own set of control issues and many incidents of mistrust, jealousy, suspicion, and miscommunication lead to the gradual demise of their three-year relationship.
Whitney Scharer attempts to educate readers about Lee Miller’s biographical information. Lee was raped at age seven by a family friend and contracted gonorrhea. This seemed significant in her childhood. There is also a claim that Lee’s mother was jealous of her and her relationship with her father. These events from her early life were not developed as bio-fiction plot points. Additionally, the prologue focuses on Lee’s eventual marriage to Roland Penrose, but there is little information about this part of her life in the book.
Interspersed in the Man Ray story are snippets of Lee Miller’s work as a photojournalist during World War II, which obviously took place years later. Settings include London, Normandy, and Saint-Malo. I wished that these segments were fleshed out a bit more so that I could have better understood Lee Miller when she finally worked on her own as an artist, rather than in the shadows of Man Ray. Whitney Scharer’s emphasis was more on romance than a biography, which interfered with the enjoyment of a novel that I thought would highlight the work of an exceptional woman.
