April 1, 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the moment my parents bought Farleys House and the farm around it. From that first moment this place has been at the core of my being. As a young person it did not matter how far across the globe I travelled or how long I stayed away, it gave me the solid anchor of apparent permanence. When Suzanna and I returned from our travels in 1974 it was to our own home, three fields away on the farm. Farleys, then still occupied by my parents, remained as the lodestar of our lives. Over the years its importance evolved into something bigger that has justified us in dedicating the resources to conserve it and develop it as an Historic Artist’s Home. The impulse for this was totally unexpected.
Soon after Lee’s death, Suzanna discovered a vast collection of her negatives, photographs and manuscripts stored in boxes in the attic. Many dated from her early days in Paris, but it was her war dispatches that immediately captivated me. Her compassionate and incisive prose showed a side of Lee I had never seen, and which I could not reconcile with the damaged woman I had known.
With Roland’s support we started sorting and archiving the material, much encouraged by Valerie Lloyd of the Royal Photographic Society. The publishers Thames & Hudson heard about our find and, as a huge act of faith in the material and myself, commissioned me to write Lee’s biography, The Lives of Lee Miller. Roland was fascinated as although he and Lee had known each other for forty years, she had told him very little about herself, particularly concerning her childhood and war career. When Vogue heard what we were doing they generously turned over to us all the remaining Lee Miller files in their archives and Erik Miller gave us many of Lee’s photographs from the New York period when he was her assistant. Roland died when I was half way through the writing and if it had not been for the help and encouragement given to me by David E Scherman, I do not know how I would have completed the task.
Assembling and running the Lee Miller Archives would not have been possible without Carole Callow, a photographic printer who became our curator. Carole retired in 2017. By this time, following Agfa’s discontinuation of their unsurpassable printing papers, our digital technician Lance Downie had converted our printing to digital format so our dark room closed. The Archive occupies five rooms on the first floor of Farleys and a climate-controlled store holds the negatives and vintage material. Our first registrar was Arabella Hayes, soon to be joined by my daughter Ami Bouhassane.
With Farleys House becoming an Historic Artist’s Home in its own right, we have grown at a rate we could never have imagined. Ami, who is now my co-director, has a core part-time staff of 15 people keeping track of 60,000 negatives, 20,000 vintage prints, manuscripts, art collection, ephemera, costumes, caring for the house, galleries, sculpture garden and maintaining our websites. We have another 30 seasonal people who are responsible for helping to run the tours of the house and take care of our visitors.
Over the years, our website of images by Lee, Roland and some of their associates has become a research resource for academics and picture editors worldwide. Kerry Negahban and Lori Inglis Hall run the sales from our rights and permissions department supplying images for reproduction in all types of print and media, the income from which is key to our survival. Jane Parsons runs the fine print department and, representing ourselves we sell through fairs such as Photo London.