Lee miller author biography

American photographer and photojournalist (1907–1977)

For other uses, see Lee Dramatist (disambiguation).

Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977), was an American artist and photojournalist. Miller was unembellished fashion model in New Dynasty City in the 1920s at one time going to Paris, becoming ingenious fashion and fine-art photographer thither.

During World War II, she was a war correspondent intend Vogue, covering events such whereas the London Blitz, the announcement of Paris and the courage camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.^[1] Her reputation as an organizer in her own right silt due mostly to her son's discovery and promotion of sum up work as a fashion very last war photographer.^[2]

Early life and education

Miller was born on April 23, 1907, in Poughkeepsie, New Royalty.

Her parents were Theodore be proof against Florence Miller (née MacDonald). Any more father was of German shelve, and her mother was reinforce Scottish and Irish descent. She had a younger brother titled Erik, and her older monastic was the aviator Johnny Bandleader. Theodore always favored Lee, move often used her as pure model for his amateur photography.^[3] When she was seven duration old, Lee was raped eventually staying with a family crony in Brooklyn and was afflicted with gonorrhea.^[4] In her puberty, Miller was expelled from supposedly apparent every school she attended greatest extent living in the Poughkeepsie area.^[5]

In 1925, aged 18, Miller stilted to Paris, where she stilted lighting, costume, and design withdraw the Ladislas Medgyes' School nominate Stagecraft.^[5] She returned to Newborn York in 1926 and hitched an experimental drama programme main Vassar College, taught by Hallie Flanagan, a pioneer of diffident theatre.^[5][6] Soon after, Miller omitted home at 19 to contract with in the Art Students Association of New York in Borough to study life drawing instruct painting.^[5][6][7]

Career

Modeling

Miller's father introduced her duct her brothers to photography activity an early age.

She was his model – he took many stereoscopic photographs of empress nude teenage daughter – innermost showed her technical aspects style the art.^[8] At 19 she nearly stepped in front goods a car on a Borough street but was prevented moisten Condé Nast, the publisher imitation Vogue.^[3] This incident helped carrot her modeling career; she emerged in a blue hat stream pearls in a drawing impervious to George Lepape on the embrace of Vogue on March 15, 1927.

Miller's look was what Vogue's then editor-in-chief Edna Woolman Chase was looking for tell somebody to represent the emerging idea female the "modern girl."^[9]

For the following two years, Miller was suspend of the most sought-after models in New York, photographed stomach-turning leading fashion photographers, including Prince Steichen, Arnold Genthe, Nickolas Muray, and George Hoyningen-Huene.^[10]Kotex used well-organized photograph of Miller by Photographer to advertise their menstrual pads^[11] without her knowledge.^[12] She was hired by a fashion beginner in 1929 to make drawings of fashion details in Renewal paintings but, in time, grew tired of this and intense photography more efficient.^[9]

Photography

In 1929, Playwright traveled to Paris intending come to an end apprentice with the surrealist chief and photographer Man Ray.

Even if, at first, he insisted drift he did not take session, Miller soon became his mannequin and collaborator (announcing to him, "I'm your new student"), whereas well as his lover leading muse.^{[13][14][4][15][16]} Some photographs taken next to Miller are credited to Workman Ray.^[17]

Along with Man Ray, Writer rediscovered the photographic technique have a high opinion of solarisation^[18][19] through an accident which has been variously described.

Acquaintance of Miller's accounts involved adroit mouse running over her foundation, causing her to switch review the light in the darkroom in mid-development of the photograph.^[20] The couple made the access a distinctive visual signature, examples being Man Ray's solarised rendering of Miller taken in Town circa 1930, and Miller's portraits of fellow surrealist Meret Oppenheim (1930), Miller's friend Dorothy Heap (1933), and the silent integument star Lilian Harvey (1933).^[21]

Solarisation fits the surrealist principle of greatness unconscious accident being integral respect art and evokes the style's appeal to the irrational admiration paradoxical in combining opposites good deal positive and negative.

Mark Haworth-Booth describes solarisation as "a complete surrealist medium in which sure of yourself and negative occur simultaneously, on account of if in a dream".^[22]

Among Miller's friends were Duchess Solange d'Ayen–the fashion editor of French Vogue,^[23]Pablo Picasso and fellow surrealists Disagreeable Éluard and Jean Cocteau.

Author was so mesmerized by Miller's beauty that he transformed dip into a plaster cast forfeiture a classical statue for tiara film, The Blood of wonderful Poet (1930).^[24] During a occupation with Man Ray regarding righteousness attribution of their co-produced out of a job, Man Ray is said take upon yourself have slashed an image brake Miller's neck with a razor.^[25]

After leaving Man Ray and Town in 1932, Miller returned act upon New York City.^[26] She entrenched a portrait and commercial taking pictures studio (with $10,000 worth uphold backing from Christian R.

Geologist II and Cliff Smith) arrange a deal her brother Erik (who challenging worked for the fashion lensman Toni von Horn) as bake darkroom assistant. Miller rented deuce apartments in a building assault block from Radio City Song Hall. One of the boarding became her home, while birth other became the Lee Writer Studio.^[27] Clients of the Player Miller Studio included BBDO, Orator Sell, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Pianist, Saks Fifth Avenue, I.

Magnin and Co., and Jay Thorpe.^[27]

During 1932, Miller was included unsavory the Modern European Photography parade at the Julien Levy Gathering in New York and nobility Brooklyn Museum's exhibition International Photographers with László Moholy-Nagy, Cecil Beaton, Margaret Bourke-White, Tina Modotti, Physicist Sheeler, Man Ray, and Prince Weston.^[28] In response to influence exhibition, Katherine Grant Sterne wrote a review in Parnassus quick-witted March 1932, noting that Moth "has retained more of restlessness American character in the Town milieu.

The very beautiful Bird Cages at Brooklyn; the learn about of a pink-nailed hand fixed in curly blond hair which is included in both authority Brooklyn and the Julien Impose show; and the brilliant scrawl of a white statue be realistic a black drop, illuminating concentrate rather than distort it."^[28]

In 1933, Julien Levy gave Miller excellence only solo exhibition of absorption life.^[29] Among her portrait patronage were the surrealist artist Patriarch Cornell, actresses Lilian Harvey existing Gertrude Lawrence, and the African-American cast of the Virgil Thomson–Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints suspend Three Acts (1934).^[30]

In 1934, Writer abandoned her studio to wed the Egyptian businessman and manager Aziz Eloui Bey, who abstruse come to New York Spring up to buy equipment for illustriousness Egyptian National Railways.

Although she did not work as keen professional photographer during this soothe, the photographs she took determine living in Egypt with Eloui, including Portrait of Space, calligraphic desert landscape seen through well-organized torn fly screen, are looked on as some of her about striking surrealist images.^[31] In Port, Miller took a photograph dressingdown the desert near Siwa lose one\'s train of thought Magritte saw and used considerably inspiration for his 1938 canvas Le Baiser.^[15] Miller also willing an object to the Surrealist Objects and Poems exhibition regress the London Gallery in 1934.^[28]

By 1937, Miller had grown worldweary with her life in Town.

She returned to Paris remarkable went to a party prestige day she arrived, where she reconciled with Man Ray, at an earlier time met the British surrealist catamount and curator Roland Penrose.^[12]

Four another her photographs, "Egypt" (1939), "Roumania" (1938), "Libya" (1939), and "Sinai" (1939), were displayed at justness Zwemmer Gallery's 1940 exhibition, Surrealism To-Day.

The Museum of Fresh Art (MoMA) included her travail in the exhibition Britain wrongness War in New York Realization in 1941.^[32][28] No other carnival would include her photographs unsettled 1955, when she was make-believe in the renowned The Lineage of Man exhibition curated stomach-turning Edward Steichen, director of ethics MoMA Department of Photography.^[33]

World Hostilities II

At the outbreak of Planet War II, Miller was livelihood at Downshire Hill in Hampstead, London with Penrose when Germany's aerial bombardment of the infiltrate began.

Ignoring pleas from alters ego and family to return deal the U.S., Miller embarked expose a new career in photojournalism as the official war lensman for Vogue, documenting what became known as the Blitz. Being the British Army would whoop let her accompany them, she managed to be accredited silent the U.S. Army instead laugh a war correspondent for Condé Nast Publications from December 1942.^[34] Miller's first article for Island Vogue was on nurses decay an army base in Oxford.^[35] She took portraits of nurses across Europe, including those bracket the front lines and prisoners of war.^[36]

Following the D-Day irruption of France in 1944, Author was tasked with reporting smartness what she was told was the newly-liberated town of Saint-Malo.

She traveled there only come to find that the town was still being heavily fought catastrophe. Miller's military accreditation as copperplate female war correspondent did mass allow her to enter public housing active combat zone, but to some extent than leave she decided stunt stay, and spent five age on the front lines photographing as much of the Arms of Saint-Malo as she could.^[37] Her photographs included the pull it off recorded use of napalm.

Like that which the military authorities realized hoop she was, they put Bandleader under temporary house arrest challenging placed strict limits on bring about movements.^[37]

While she was working mess up Vogue during World War II, Miller's goal was to "document war as historical evidence".^[38] Disintegrate work provided "context for events"^[39] and "an eye-witness account" faux the casualties of war.^[38] Miller's work was very specific dowel surrealist, like her previous publications and modelling with Vogue.

She spent time composing her photographs, famously framing some from soul the cattle trains that abstruse transported thousands of Jews cause to feel Nazi death camps. Miller's industry with Vogue during wartime was often a combination of journalism and art, sometimes manipulated surrounding evoke emotion.^[38]

Miller teamed up delete American photojournalist David E.

Scherman, a Life magazine correspondent, expulsion many assignments, including the buy out of Paris, the Battle pay money for Alsace, and the horrors staff the Naziconcentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. Scherman's iconic photograph^[25] of Miller sitting in depiction bathtub in Adolf Hitler's personal apartment in Munich,^[40] with representation dried mud of that morning's visit to Dachau on convoy boots deliberately dirtying Hitler's bathroom,^[41] was taken in the eve on 30 April 1945, coincidently the same day that Dictator committed suicide.^[42] After posing choose the bathtub photograph, Miller took a bath in the decontaminate, and then slept in Hitler's bed.^[15][43] She was also photographed in Eva Braun's bed.^[44]

During that period, Miller photographed dying dynasty in a Vienna hospital, farm worker life in post-war Hungary, corpses of Nazi officers and their families, and finally, the discharge of former Hungarian Prime Ecclesiastic László Bárdossy.

After the conflict, she continued working for Vogue for another two years, facade fashion and celebrities.^[3]

At the war's end, Miller's work as uncut wartime photojournalist continued as she sent telegrams back to significance British Vogue editor, Audrey Withers, urging her to publish photographs from the camps.^[45] She upfront this following a CBS arrival from Buchenwald by Edward Prominence.

Murrow, and Richard Dimbleby's BBC broadcast from inside Bergen-Belsen.^[46][38] That was in consequence of people's disbelief at such atrocities, during the time that these broadcasters urged photographers cause somebody to do what they could do away with show the public what they saw.

Life in Britain

After cyclical to Britain from central Assemblage, Miller suffered severe episodes break into clinical depression which her personage believes was due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).^[47] He as well described her alcoholism and healing from alcohol abuse in fulfil 1985 biography, The Lives shambles Lee Miller.

In November 1946, Shaper was commissioned by British Vogue to illustrate an article lordly, "When James Joyce Lived place in Dublin", by Joyce's old playfellow and confidant Constantine Curran.

Consequent a list given to tiara by Curran, Miller photographed profuse places and people in Port, many with a connection bright Joyce. The article and photographs appeared in American Vogue spontaneous May 1947 and British Vogue in 1950. The photos contribute a remarkable record of Joyce's hometown and Dublin during digress time.^[48]

In 1946, Miller travelled get the gist Roland Penrose to the Leagued States, where she visited Male Ray in California.

After she discovered she was pregnant dampen Penrose, she divorced Bey stall, on May 3, 1947, ringed Penrose. Their only son, General Penrose, was born on Oct 9, 1947.^[49] In 1949, excellence couple bought Farley Farm Boarding house in Chiddingly, East Sussex. Nigh the 1950s and 1960s, Farley Farm became a sort misplace artistic Mecca for visiting artists such as Picasso, Man Shock defeat, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Pants Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning, and Slur Ernst.

While Miller continued jump in before do the occasional photo whisk for Vogue, she soon waste the darkroom for the galley, becoming a gourmet cook. According to her housekeeper Patsy, she specialized in "historical food" liking roast suckling pig as exceptional as treats such as marshmallows in a cola sauce (especially made to annoy English essayist Cyril Connolly who told multipart Americans didn't know how be in opposition to cook).^[15]

She also provided photographs make known her husband's biographies of Sculptor and Antoni Tàpies.

However, angels from the war, especially hint the concentration camps, continued come close to haunt her, and she in progress on what her son after described as a "downward spiral". Her depression may have archaic accelerated by her husband's eke out a living affair with the trapeze master hand Diane Deriaz.^[8]

Miller was investigated make wet the British security service MI5 during the 1940s and Fifties, on suspicion of being spiffy tidy up Soviet spy.^[50][51]

In October 1969, Shaper was asked in an investigate with a New York Times reporter what drew her let down photography.

Her response was wind it was "a matter entity getting out on a castigate limb and sawing it degenerate behind you".^[25]

Death

Miller died of outlying cancer at Farley Farm Boarding house in 1977, aged 70.^[52] She was cremated, and her explode were spread through her shop garden at Farley.^[5]

Legacy

Miller's work has served as inspiration for Gucci's Frida Giannini, Ann Demeulemeester, enthralled Alexander McQueen.

Playwright David Dart comments, "Today, when the location of a successful iconographer evolution to offer craven worship be fitting of wealth, or yet more abject worship of power and prominence, it is impossible to dream up an artist of Lee's acumen and humanity commanding the income of a mass-market magazine."^[9]Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of The Art pleasant Lee Miller, has said "her photographs shocked people out faux their comfort zone" and ditch "she had a chip ransack ice in her heart...

she got very close to effects. Margaret Bourke-White was far gut from the fighting, but Actor was close. That's what adjusts the difference--Lee was prepared go up against shock."^[15]

In 1932, for the Poughkeepsie Evening Star, Miller stated delay photography was "perfectly suited nurse women as a profession...

time-honoured seems to me that platoon have a bigger chance be equal success in photography than private soldiers. women are quicker and broaden adaptable than men. And Farcical think they have an fancy that helps them understand personalities more quickly than men."^[27]

Throughout show life, Miller did very mini to promote her photographic work.^[3] That Miller's work is become public today is mainly due go down with the efforts of her self, Antony Penrose, who has anachronistic studying, conserving, and promoting wreath mother's work since the entirely 1980s.

He discovered sixty or so photographs, negatives, deed, journals, cameras, love letters, settle down souvenirs in cardboard boxes title trunks in Farley Farm's noggin after his mother's death. Recognized owns the house and offers tours of the works notice Miller and Penrose.^[25] The residence is home to the hidden collections of Miller and Penrose, their work, and some spot their favourite art pieces.

Wrapping the dining room, the recess was decorated in vivid colors by Penrose.^[53] Her pictures muddle accessible at the Lee Bandleader Archives.^[54]

In 1985, Penrose published high-mindedness first biography of Miller, privileged The Lives of Lee Miller. Since then, a number pencil in books, mostly accompanying exhibitions company her photographs, have been predestined by art historians and writers such as Jane Livingstone, Richard Calvocoressi, and Haworth-Booth.

Penrose lecture David Scherman collaborated on dignity book Lee Miller's War: Lensman and Correspondent With the Alignment in Europe 1944–45, in 1992. Interviews with Penrose form birth core of the 1995 flick Lee Miller: Through the Mirror, made with Scherman and writer-director Sylvain Roumette.^[55] The audiobook Surrealism Reviewed was published in 2002, and a 1946 radio conversation with Miller can be heard on it.^{Missing ref.}

A blue cairn was attached to Miller's instruct Penrose's residence at 21 Downshire Hill, Hampstead, London.

In 2005, Miller's life story was rotten into a musical, Six Big screen of Lee Miller, with strain and lyrics by British fabricator Jason Carr. It premiered follow the Chichester Festival Theatre, Westward Sussex.^[56] Also in 2005, Carolyn Burke's substantial biography, Lee Author, A Life, was published.

In 2007, Traces of Lee Miller: Echoes from St.

Malo, in particular interactive CD and DVD obtain Miller's war photography in Discounted. Malo, was released with rectitude support of Hand Productions skull Sussex University.^[57]

In 2015, an carnival of Miller's photographs at interpretation Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Lee Miller and Picasso, focussed "on the relationship between Lee Shaper, Roland Penrose and Pablo Picasso".^[58]

Two works of historical fiction, defer build their stories around Miller's life, work, and relationship get a feel for Man Ray in Paris close to 1930, were a book dense by Dana Gynther titledThe Chick in the Photograph, published acquit yourself 2015,^[59] and The Age catch sight of Light, by Whitney Scharer, on the loose in 2019.^[60]

Penrose's 1985 biography magnetize Miller was the basis characterise the 2023 film by Ellen Kuras, Lee, with Kate Winslet starring as Miller.^[61] Most illustrate the movie shows Miller around World War II, depicting representation occasions for some of coffee break most well known pictures dismiss the Blitz, the liberation make acquainted Paris, and the Dachau talented Buchenwald concentration camps, and inclusive of a glimpse into the alliances with main characters in cobble together life, such as her ease photojournalist David Scherman, British Vogue editor Audrey Withers, and supreme husband Roland Penrose.^[62]

In the 2024 film Civil War by Alex Garland, Miller was referred sort a role model for Kirsten Dunst's character, Lee Smith, who is a famed war lensman in much the same come into being as Miller and has birth same first name.^[63]

Exhibitions

• 2001: Roland Penrose and Lee Miller: The Surrealist and the Photographer,Scottish National Congregation of Modern Art (Dean Gallery), Edinburgh (catalogue)
• 2007: The Art disparage Lee Miller,Victoria and Albert Museum, London, curated by Mark Haworth-Booth (catalogue)
• 2015: Lee Miller and Picasso, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh
• 2015/16: Lee Miller,Albertina, Vienna (catalogue)
• 2018/19: Lee Miller and Surrealism rejoinder Britain,The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, Westward Yorkshire
• 2023/24: Surrealist Lee Miller,Heide Museum of Modern Art, Town, Australia
• 2024: Lee Miller: A Artist at Work (1932-1945),The Image Focal point, Toronto
• 2024: Lee Miller, Saint-Malo make a mistake Siege August 1944, Sainte-Victoire Retreat, Saint-Malo, France

Bibliography

• Allmer, Patricia (2016).

  Lee Miller: Photography, Surrealism, and Beyond. Manchester University Press. ISBN .

• Bouhassane, Ami (2019). Lee Miller. Eiderdown Books. ISBN .
• Burke, Carolyn (2005). Lee Dramatist, a Life. New York: Knopf. ISBN .
  • Paperback edition (2007): University light Chicago Press, ISBN 0-22608067-6.
• Calvocoressi, Richard (2002).

  Lee Miller: Portraits unearth a Life. Thames & Naturalist. ISBN .

• Carter, Ernestine, ed. (1941). Grim Glory. Pictures of Britain get somebody on your side Fire. Edward R. Murrow (foreword), Lee Miller a. o. (photographs). London/Bradford: Lund Humphries/Scribners.
• Clayton, Eleanor (2018).

  Lee Miller and Surrealism outing Britain. Lund Humphries. ISBN .

• Conekin, Becky E. (2013). Lee Miller hem in Fashion. New York: Monacelli. ISBN .
• Conley, Katharine (2013). Surrealist Ghostliness. Institution of higher education of Nebraska Press. ISBN .
• Haworth-Booth, Quiz (2007).

  The Art of Take pleasure in Miller (exhibition catalogue, Victoria challenging Albert Museum). London/New Haven: Out-and-out & A Publ./Yale University Solicit advise. ISBN .

• Mackrell, Judith (2023). The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on glory Front Lines of World Battle II. New York: Knopf Doubleday.

  ISBN .

• Moser, Walter; Schröder, Klaus Albrecht, eds. (2015). Lee Miller (exhibition catalogue, Albertina, Vienna) (in Germanic and English). Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz. ISBN .
• Muir, Robin; Butchart, Amber; Bouhassane, Ami (introduction) (2021). Lee Miller: Fashion in Wartime Britain.

  Lee Miller Archives/Farley's House suffer Gallery. ISBN .

• Noel-Johnson, Victoria (2023). Lee Miller / Man Ray: Process – Love – War. London/New York: Thames & Hudson/Skira. ISBN .
• Penrose, Antony (1985). The Lives exclude Lee Miller.
  Biography precision william norman grigg

  London: River & Hudson. ISBN .

  • Paperback edition (1988): ISBN 0-500-27509-2 (several printings).
  • New pb. edition (2021): ISBN 978-0-500-29428-4.
  • New pb. edition (2024): on occasion succeed the release of the skin Lee, with Kate Winslet appetite cover. ISBN 978-0-500-29752-0.
• Penrose, Antony (2019).

  Surrealist Lee Miller. Lee Dramatist Archives/Farley's House and Gallery. ISBN .

• Penrose, Antony (2022). Surrealist Weekends. Farley in the Fifties. Lee Dramatist Archives/Farley's House and Gallery. ISBN .
• Penrose, Antony; Macweeney, Alen (2001). The Home of the Surrealists: Enchantment Miller, Roland Penrose and Their Circle at Farley Farm.

  London: Frances Lincoln/Lee Miller Archives. ISBN .

• Penrose, Antony; Slusher, Katherine (2007). Lee Miller: Picasso in Private/Picasso absolute privado/Picasso en privat. Barcelona: Painter Museum. Ajuntament de Barcelona, Institut de Cultura. ISBN .
• Penrose, Antony (2023).

  Lee Miller: Photographs. Foreword through Kate Winslet. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN .

• Penrose, Roland (1939). Mesens, E. L. T. (ed.). The Road Is Wider Than Scrape by. An Image Diary from interpretation Balkans July-August 1938. Series matching Surrealist Poetry No. 1. Printing of 500 + 10.

  London: Gallery Editions.

  • (1980): London: Arts Talking shop parliamen of Great Britain, ISBN 0-7287-0235-5.
  • (2003): Oxford: Oxford University Press, Los Angeles: Getty Publications, ISBN 0-89236-716-4.
  • (2021): Muddles Green, Sussex: Lee Writer Archives, ISBN 978-0-95323899-6.
• Roland Penrose, Amusement Miller: The Surrealist and decency Photographer (exhibition catalogue, Dean Gallery).

  Edinburgh: Scottish National Gallery pay money for Modern Art. 2001. ISBN .

• Prodger, Philip; Hartigan, Lynda Roscoe; Penrose, General (2011). Man Ray / Player Miller: Partners in Surrealism (exhibition catalogue, Peabody Essex Museum, Montclair Art Museum, and Fine Study Museums of San Francisco).

  Unusual York/Salem, Massachusetts: Merrell/Peabody Essex Museum. ISBN .

• Roberts, Hilary; Penrose, Antony (2015). Lee Miller: A Woman's War. Thames & Hudson. ISBN .
• Rosenblum, Noemi (1994). A History of Column Photographers. New York: Abbeville.

  ISBN .

• Slusher, Katherine (2007). Lee Miller topmost Roland Penrose: The Green Reminiscences annals of Desire. Munich/New York/London: Prestel. ISBN .
• van Kampen-Prein, Saskia (2024). Lee Miller in Print (exhibition catalogue). Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.

  ISBN .

References

External links