Category Archives: Bodies

Intimate Experiences: War and Food in Lee Miller

By Karina Elizabeth Vázquez

There are only a few steps between my living room and kitchen, so a section of the library stands directly opposite to a countertop stacked with cookbooks. It wasn’t until I began to think about what to write about Lee Miller (1907-1977), her work as a war correspondent, battlefield photographer, and her relationship with gastronomy, that I realized that two books sit opposite one another, one in the library and one in the kitchen: The Unwomanly Face of War (2017) by Svetlana Alexievich and Lee Miller: A Life with Food, Friends & Recipes (2017) by Miller’s granddaughter Ami Bouhassane. The texts engage in a necessary dialogue between what is expressed in testimonies from women of the Russian army collected by Alexievich and what is present in the lives of Lee Miller, the surrealist muse and photographer, the war correspondent for Vogue, and the brilliant chef. War is an extremely intimate experience, says Alexievich, and in their testimonies, women who participated in the war speak about what happened and didn’t happen to their bodies. During the war they didn’t feel like women; upon returning, their bodies had become dead, they had lost their menstruation, they had to deal with the scars, and they felt no desire. The burden of rebuilding daily life, following gender mandates, forced them to silence the trauma of that violent experience. What did Lee Miller feel in her body during the war? She too experienced silence. Upon returning from the war, she filed all her photographic material in the attic (rediscovered by her son, Anthony Penrose, only after her death in 1977). She instead found in the intimacy of the kitchen, in culinary creativity, a healing mechanism.

An overhead view of a history and photography book laying on a kitchen counter
Fig. 1.  A view of the author’s kitchen/library, courtesy of the author.

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Biographers and critics have pointed out that Miller led several lives: as a model and surrealist artist of the 1920s and 1930s, a fashion photographer of the late 1930s, a war correspondent and combat photographer from 1944 to 1946, and a creative chef from the postwar years until her death. Miller’s photography and culinary art are not separate and share a common spirit. There is a continuity between the surrealism of her early years, her experience at the front—where, as photojournalist David E. Scherman has noted, she used her culinary skills and knowledge to search for non-perishable foods and herbs to add flavor to rations and cooking stews in helmets—and the imagination and attention to detail of her later cooking.

Bright recipe and photography books lay open across a kitchen counter
Fig. 2. An alternate view of the author’s kitchen/library, courtesy of the author.

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Two images that have the body as a common component come to mind when I think about the relationship between war and food in Lee Miller’s work. The first is the photograph Severed Breasts From Radical Surgery In A Place Setting, from 1929, where the luminosity of her lens captures the violence inflicted on the female body by showing a removed breast served on a plate, ready to be eaten. The image denounces beauty standards, medical discourse, and eating norms, which coalescence as if they were simultaneously a scalpel and a utensil that intensely intervene in the female body and feelings. It’s clear that, even in her time as Man Ray’s muse and fashion photographer, Miller was a correspondent in another war and a photographer on another battlefield.

The transformation of everyday life imposed by the world of war on women’s lives and bodies appeared through Lee’s lens in critical montages that indicate the same thing as the testimonies collected by Alexievich: for women, above all, war is murder and, furthermore, a hard daily labor in which feeding themselves and caring for others occupies most of the time and space that survives the violence. I think of “Homeless: Like The Women Of German-Invaded Countries, German Women Now Cook In The Ruins”, a photograph taken in Nuremberg in 1945. Cooking is an act that never occurs in a vacuum, even when it is the result of the violent destruction of the meaning that, for better or worse, orders our hours and days.

The second image is the recipe for “Cauliflower Breast,” which appears in one of the photographs accompanying the article “How to Make an Art of the Happy Weekend. The Personal Strategy and Beautiful Food of Lee Penrose,” by Bettina McNulty, published in House & Gardens in 1973 (and reproduced in Bouhassane’s book) under the title “Cauliflower Mayonnaise.” As Bouhassane points out, this time the breasts are served by invitation only, a clear indication that Miller is positioned differently than in that 1929 image: equally critical, but probably more tired and, as a result of that tiredness, willing to create differently. I visualize Lee Miller in her kitchen, imaginatively searching for opportunities to counter what her camera captured at Buchenwald. Cooking is also a form of remembrance; dishes can become memories. Once again, I turn to Svetlana Alexievich.For her, memories are not impassive narratives of the past, but creative acts that allow us to rewrite our lives. And I can see Miller, with her recipe books, concocting something simple and disruptive like an “Onion Upside-Down Cake, and later on, as Bouhassane recalls, laughing and disappointed after winning a culinary contest that had a bag of onions as a prize. Her relationship with the culinary world, before, during, and after the war, was a way of being present, of relocating herself as a mechanism of resistance.

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Karina Vázquez (Ph.D., University of Florida) teaches and researches Latin American literature, and cultures, visual studies, and critical pedagogy. She the Director of Community-Based Learning (CBL) in the Department of Latina American, Latino & Iberian Studies at the University of Richmond. Her teaching specializations include Spanish language and seminars on work and gender, food and culture, and graphic novels. In 2023, Dr. Vázquez co-curated the exhibition Jay Lynn Gomez: Domestic Scenes Reconsidered / Jay Lynn Gomez: Otra mirada sobre lo doméstico at the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum at the University of Richmond. Some of her publications on Latin American literature and culture, literary and visual representations of work, CBL, and food studies can be accessed through https://scholarship.richmond.edu/lalis/.

Crafting Food, Crafting Senses

By Sonakshi Srivastava

There is something about my mother’s hands. At once so mundane, at once so magical – they infuse life to the oft-quoted, almost quotidian, Hindi idiom haathon mein jaadoo hai (there is magic in your hands).  I have often marvelled at the multiplicities of hands in general, and my mother’s in particular. Her hands, naturally, embody the essence of life to me. They contain the world, and open it up too – by appealing to the innate, the familial, the sensuous, her hands are no less than a recipe that nurtures life. 

Hands, I believe, are perhaps the most versatile parts of the human body. Crafted for tactility, and capable of creating, the catalogue of hands’ works run aplenty. Hands assume a life of their own. A mental recollection of a person would necessarily entail a recollection of their hands or by extension, a creation by their hands. Consequently, a sudden surge of memories announces itself, brimming forth with the sensual affectations of the tactile, the olfactory, the auditory. It is almost as if the senses are enmeshed with the hands, a kind of memory randomly accessed. 

My mother’s hands intrigue me. They are an archive, an extensive chronicler of time, a document of experiences – always nourishing, always nurturing. In their negotiations with the everyday, a rhythmic grammar of sameness emerges – those hands at work – mending, cooking, healing. This visual essay rings up the vocabulary of one such particular memory – the sameness that emerged when I saw her prepare my favourite dish, ghuiyyan ke patte ke pakode (fritters made from the leaves of colocasia), and when she mended and dyed a dupatta for me, and how these images spoke to the sensuous realm, thereby making me aware of the unity of the body and the mind. 

सामग्री//Ingredients:

  • spices
  • thread
  • leaves of colocasia
  • fabric
  • thread
  • flowers
  • scissors

 विधि//Steps:

1. गंध// Smell

Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava

Gather the ingredients together. Pay attention to how each ingredient evokes the senses. The smell of the marigolds, the smell of the spices, the smell of the leaves of colocasia, the gradient of the veins of the leaves, the texture of the dupatta, the edge of the scissors, of the needle.

2. स्पर्श//Touch

Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava

Hands at work. The ingredients are infused with life as the fingers gently spread the petals on the dupatta, the masala paste on the leaves. The ingredients are now works in-progress. 

3. ध्वनि//Sound

Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava

The congruency begins to emerge as the hands perform similar actions in crafting together the dupatta, the fritters. The flowers rustle in the dupatta rolling over, the masala paste is enveloped in the rolling leaves.

4. दृष्टि//Sight

Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava

Threading together as an act of putting together. The hands tread carefully, negotiating between the fragile cloth and the sharp needle, the supple leaf against the abrasive thread.  

5. स्वाद//Taste

Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava

A severance, a cut – in the cloth, in the rolled-up leaf. The carved-out parts are now dyed, and fried respectively – the final act of feeding the aesthetics.

When I moved away from home in 2015, epiphanic realizations about things that I had taken for granted hit me. I realized the importance of the most mundane things – from stitching to cooking. In an attempt to learn these skills, I pivoted to my mother’s hands – the hope was to be able to recreate a part of her haathon ka jaadoo, to be able to bask in the familial impressions of the senses that are closely tied to my mother’s hands.  The mere sight of her hands – in person, or in memory conjure up images of deep familiarity and warmth. I am instantly struck by the fertile machinations of my mother’s hands, and how a sheer recollection of the same is capable of dishing out images of my favourite recipe by her, thoroughly refreshing my senses. 

My mother’s hands are the artificer of memories – constantly weaving the present for a reflection of the past, for a window into the future.


Sonakshi Srivastava is a senior writing tutor at Ashoka University, the translations editor at The Usawa Literary Review, and an educational arm assistant at Asymptote. As opposed to eating, she loves writing and talking about food. 

 


“The Smells of London” and their Sources at the Fin de Siècle

By Jess Clark

In September 1889, the London Times printed a complaint from a disturbed Kensington resident. Under the heading “Smells of London,” Arthur Clay challenged “[t]he apathy with which Londoners submit to be bathed in disgusting odours.”[i] The author complained of distressing smells blanketing North Kensington, typically at night and often in the summer. Despite his claims that Londoners didn’t care, the response to his initial letter proved otherwise; Clay’s submission set off some three years of correspondence from displeased and disgusted residents. Despite sanitary initiatives, they described nuisance smells that they ascribed to a number of different sources: polluted waterways, dirty streets, blocked drains, poor ventilation. Contrasting official messages about the efficiency of London’s orderly modern infrastructures, correspondents instead foregrounded olfactory disorder.

In this early etching, George Cruikshank criticizes the expansion of building schemes across London. “Building materials marching out of London of their own accord to build suburban housing over greenfield sites,” 1829. Courtesy of Wellcome Images.

In taking to the London Times, correspondents discovered a forum to express their displeasure over London’s transforming urban smellscapes.[ii] In the wake of rapid growth and residential development, some nineteenth-century Londoners found themselves living next to chemical works and other industrialized sites. The mixing of residential and industrial space proved a recipe for Londoners’ dissatisfaction: in the lack of municipal action, in the lack of private responses, in the horrible stenches that wafted into their homes each and every night.

Indeed, if we look to letters in the Times between 1889 and 1891, many Kensington residents were deeply upset by the smell nuisances. To capture their frustration, they tapped into anxieties around smell’s “subjectiv[ity], variabi[lity], and uncertain[ty],” which had long been the source of its “social and cultural power,” in the words of Will Tullett.[iii] For some, this meant framing smells as night-time invaders of the home—a domestic sanctuary, which was supposed to be a refuge from public, daytime lives. One lady and her young ward, for instance, “both smelt the bad smell” in Eaton Place, Belgravia. She continued, “It awoke me; she was awake. It was very nasty and quite different to any other smell.”[iv] In another example, a letter writer “actually went downstairs in the belief that some part of the house was on fire.” He was not alone. “Other members of my family have had the same experiences, and not long ago searched the whole house from roof to basement for the supposed combustion going on.”[v] In a period of heightened distinction between private and public space, invisible nocturnal smells disturbed the illusion of domestic safety, as an external disorder that penetrated the sanctity of the private abode.

Other authors foregrounded the alleged health effects of these nocturnal smells, suggesting the longstanding influence of miasmatic theories of illness, which had dominated an earlier period. For one author, the smells were “like the breath of Tartarus, death-laden with horrid stenches and health-destroying fumes….” Meanwhile, the vicar of St. Matthews ominously observed “[t]he wonder is that we are alive to tell the tale.”[vi] For these authors, the stench was a disruption but moreover—it was a health hazard. “In my house, which looks across the whole of Hyde Park, the smell leaves us with headaches and sore throats,” explained another author, before demanding “what must be the effects in the narrow streets of small dwellings?”[vii]

Detail from Charles Booth’s “Life and Labour of the People in London” (1898), showing Kensington and the easterly edge of Hammersmith (including its brickfields). Courtesy of LSE Charles Booth’s London, public domain mark.

After three years of correspondence, one question remained; what comprised the horrible smells that so distressed residents of North Kensington in the late 1880s? After considerable debate, the source was allegedly identified: brickfields in neighbouring Hammersmith, which produced a “horrible and nauseous smell” each night “lasting for several hours.” This was not just any stench. Brickmakers burned refuse—garbage—to fire their bricks. What’s more, this “fuel” most likely came from the local government’s efforts to collect vestry rubbish, as part of modernizing efforts in city management. In a compelling twist, attempts to rid London of garbage – a visual nuisance –made for new and horrible smell nuisances for residents. By focusing on the unsightliness of garbage, well-meaning officials neglected a key element of urban life: its smells.

        

[i] Arthur Clay, “The Smells of London” Times (4 September 1889): 10.

[ii] See Jonathan Reinarz, “Smell and Victorian England,” in Smell and History: A Reader, ed. Mark M. Smith (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2018). On the importance of public complaints in the American context, see Melanie A. Kiechle, Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017).

[iii] William Tullett, “Re-Odorization, Disease, and Emotion in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England,” The Historical Journal 62.3 (2019): 787.

[iv] G. J. Symons et al, “The Smells of London,” The Times (10 September 1889): 6.

[v] J. E. Latton Pickering et al, “Diphtheria in London,” The Times (17 October 1890): 10.

[vi] W. Domett-Stone et al, “Offensive Smells in London,” The Times (20 October 1890): 14.

[vii] E.H. Carbutt, “Diphtheria in London,” The Times (15 October 1890): 7.

“Like a Collapsible Concertina”: Cosmetic Interventions in Fin-de-Siècle London

Jess Clark

In the Fall of 2020, new reports revealed a marked increased in cosmetic procedures—surgery, injectables, and other dermatological treatments—over the course of the COVID pandemic. During the global crisis, some people of means have flocked to plastic surgeons, cosmetic dermatologists, and other experts for appearance-altering treatment. Observers attributed this uptick to patients’ “opportunity” to be out of the public eye for extended recovery periods, not to mention the distorting effects of long hours on social media and online meetings. Whatever the cause, the “Zoom Boom” meant a surging interest in artificial enhancements. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, some 64 per cent of its practitioners experienced increased demand for online consultations since the beginning of the pandemic.

“Face Harness,” from William A. Woodbury, Beauty Culture (New York: G.W. Dillingham Company, 1911), p. 341. Public Domain via Hathi Trust.

While this level of interest in cosmetic interventions may be unique to 2020-21, invasive procedures that required weeks of downtime are not. We need only to look to a handful of court trials taking place in fin de siècle London to hear dramatic accounts of cosmetic enhancements, their demands, and dangers. In the early twentieth century, London’s periodical press focused on a spate of cases against self-proclaimed “beauty doctors” who promised to renew the youth and looks of British women. The fact these stories only appear in the public record in the case of botched procedures suggests far more widespread—and concealed—instances of dramatic cosmetic enhancements that remain beyond the reach of historians.

One notable case unfolded in October 1904, when Britain’s periodical press covered the scandalous story of a “beauty doctor” taken to court over the alleged defrauding—and deep discomfort—of a client. Under headlines like “Wrinkles Came Back” and “’Beauty Doctor’s’ Promise,” articles detailed a Marylebone Police Court case in which a dissatisfied dressmaker described the effects of unsuccessful cosmetic treatments. Garnering laughter from the court, the dressmaker used vivid language to describe the beauty doctor’s dealings, conjuring unsavory images invoking various foodstuffs:

Madam, she said, put some stuff on her clients’ faces, which had a burning effect, and caused them to swell to a tremendous size. She then put on a sticky plaster, which was allowed to remain fifteen or sixteen hours, and when it was removed the face was like a half-roasted beefsteak. After that she administered a sticky jelly. That left the face like a pudding basin, and it was allowed to remain in that state four or five days, during which time the unhappy victim was unable to part her teeth, and had to be fed with milk in a feeding cup.

Despite these unappetizing descriptions, the dressmaker reported that the treatment’s effects were transformative. When “the mask was taken off….whatever your age, the face was that of a young woman of 18 years of age—full, clear, and fat; beautiful, in fact, without a wrinkle, a scar, or a blemish.” Although the client’s skin was “very, very red,” the effects reportedly delighted the “deluded” customers. Within days, however, “wrinkles gradually reappeared, and the face became like a collapsible concertina.”[1] Like contemporary injectables and thread lifts, the results were temporary, despite the pain experienced to garner these results.

“The Geography of a Dissipated Woman’s Face,” from Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s Book of Health and Beauty (New York: King-Richardson 1902), p. 318. Public Domain via Hathi Trust..

 

It is unclear what precisely went into these “rejuvenating” recipes. While not identified by name, the description of the “sticky jelly” suggests some form of “face skinning”—or chemical peels—which grew in popularity through the early twentieth century. As historian of cosmetics James Bennett has shown, early experimental peels could include “[t]inctures of iodine and lead, lime compresses and chemicals such as salicylic acid, resorcinol, phenol, croton oil and trichloroacetic acid.” By the twentieth century, processes of “écorchement” (or “flaying”) included caustics like salicylic acid, resorcinol, carbolic acid, and electricity to remove upper layers of the skin and reveal the “youthful” skin below. In most cases, reported American beauty entrepreneur Harriet Hubbard Ayer, a client took “board for a week or two or three with the professional skinner.” In doing so, “she pays for her board and torture in advance.”[2] Then, as now, clients remained out of sight in the aftermath of their cosmetic procedures. Whether due to self-imposed or government-mandated isolation, this time represents processes of alleged transformation, albeit at a potential cost.

 

 

[1] “Price of Beauty,” Daily Mirror (24 October 1904): 5. See also “A ‘Beauty Doctor’s’ Victim,” The Lancet (22 October 1904): 165; “Beauty for £20,” Daily Mail (24 October 1904): 3; “A Concertina Face,” Daily Express (24 October 1904): 5; “A Face Cure,” The Times (24 October 1904): 11; and “Another ‘Beauty Doctor’s’ Victim,” The Lancet (29 October 1904): 1230.

[2] Harriet Hubbard Ayer, Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s Book of Health and Beauty (New York: King-Richardson 1902), 185, quoted in James Bennett, “Face Skinning,” Cosmetics and Skin, 25 January 2019, http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/aba/face-skinning.php