ANTONY PENROSE

Film maker, photographer, author, artist, photo-curator, and co-founder of the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection

Born: 09 October 1947, London, UK

Antony’s photographic career began at an early age when peering through the viewfinder of his mother Lee Miller‘s Rolleiflex camera. He says he could not understand why the image he saw in colour returned in black and white. This began a long fascination with the medium. 

His mother was a good mentor. At the age of 14, a family visit to see Pablo Picasso produced some amateur images which later became widely published. On a trip to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1962 , Lee was taken ill and handed him her Zeiss Contax to get the pictures she could not take. She explained the working of the light meter and advised, “If you drop the camera, I will break your neck”. Later images from the 1960s of artists such as Picasso, Joan Miró and Man Ray are now widely known. 

Peter Bucknall of Athos Films gave Antony his break into 16 mm filmmaking, working on Kings Horses and Migrate to Survive. These documentaries about horses were both shot in Iran and led to Antony establishing Penrose Film Productions Ltd, with 18 produced credits for documentaries, technical films and drama shorts. 

Antony has dedicated a large part of his life to research into the lives of his parents Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, and their circle of artist friends. He established the Lee Miller Archives in the 1980s with his late wife Suzanna. Today, with his daughter Ami Bouhassane, Antony is the co-director of Farleys House & Gallery Ltd, which comprises the archives, the house museum and galleries and The Penrose Collection. Antony has a unique standpoint, having personally known many of the great artists of the 20th century. His work comprises about 15,000 images and is housed by The Penrose Collection & the Lee Miller Archives, while his books are available through all major retailers. 

His main activity is as an author and lecturer, and he is an accredited NADFAS lecturer on photography and fine art. Antony has also written performance pieces based on his parent’s lives and works, including The Angel and The Fiend on the life of Lee Miller, which has been staged widely in the USA and UK. His first book, The Lives of Lee Miller, has been adapted into a major motion picture – ‘Lee‘.