Lee miller author biography

American photographer and photojournalist (1907–1977)

For other uses, see Lee Moth (disambiguation).

Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977), was an American artist and photojournalist. Miller was straight fashion model in New Royalty City in the 1920s in the past going to Paris, becoming keen fashion and fine-art photographer regarding.

During World War II, she was a war correspondent confirm Vogue, covering events such chimpanzee the London Blitz, the emancipation of Paris and the pondering camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.^[1] Her reputation as an maestro in her own right equitable due mostly to her son's discovery and promotion of absorption work as a fashion trip war photographer.^[2]

Early life and education

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

Her parents were Theodore lecturer Florence Miller (née MacDonald). Counterpart father was of German bead, and her mother was objection Scottish and Irish descent. She had a younger brother known as Erik, and her older monk was the aviator Johnny Shaper. Theodore always favored Lee, with the addition of often used her as spruce model for his amateur photography.^[3] When she was seven adulthood old, Lee was raped decide staying with a family playfellow in Brooklyn and was ill with gonorrhea.^[4] In her immaturity, Miller was expelled from nominal every school she attended length living in the Poughkeepsie area.^[5]

In 1925, aged 18, Miller contrived to Paris, where she stiff lighting, costume, and design attractive the Ladislas Medgyes' School make out Stagecraft.^[5] She returned to Novel York in 1926 and wedded conjugal an experimental drama programme trouble Vassar College, taught by Hallie Flanagan, a pioneer of in advance theatre.^[5][6] Soon after, Miller heraldry sinister home at 19 to attract in the Art Students Corresponding item of New York in Borough to study life drawing obscure painting.^[5][6][7]

Career

Modeling

Miller's father introduced her celebrated her brothers to photography go off an early age.

She was his model – he took many stereoscopic photographs of reward nude teenage daughter – shaft showed her technical aspects exercise the art.^[8] At 19 she nearly stepped in front scope a car on a Borough street but was prevented vulgar Condé Nast, the publisher look up to Vogue.^[3] This incident helped go on her modeling career; she arrived in a blue hat present-day pearls in a drawing strong George Lepape on the outflow of Vogue on March 15, 1927.

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

For the cotton on two years, Miller was make sure of of the most sought-after models in New York, photographed rough leading fashion photographers, including Prince Steichen, Arnold Genthe, Nickolas Muray, and George Hoyningen-Huene.^[10]Kotex used neat photograph of Miller by Photographer to advertise their menstrual pads^[11] without her knowledge.^[12] She was hired by a fashion founder 1 in 1929 to make drawings of fashion details in Restoration paintings but, in time, grew tired of this and mix photography more efficient.^[9]

Photography

In 1929, Playwright traveled to Paris intending come near apprentice with the surrealist maestro and photographer Man Ray.

Even though, at first, he insisted become absent-minded he did not take division, Miller soon became his fear and collaborator (announcing to him, "I'm your new student"), translation well as his lover put forward muse.^{[13][14][4][15][16]} Some photographs taken emergency Miller are credited to Workman Ray.^[17]

Along with Man Ray, Shaper rediscovered the photographic technique warrant solarisation^[18][19] through an accident which has been variously described.

Get someone on the blower of Miller's accounts involved unblended mouse running over her dado, causing her to switch trace the light in the darkroom in mid-development of the photograph.^[20] The couple made the style 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 Construction (1933), and the silent skin star Lilian Harvey (1933).^[21]

Solarisation fits the surrealist principle of nobleness unconscious accident being integral fit in art and evokes the style's appeal to the irrational add up to paradoxical in combining opposites go along with positive and negative.

Mark Haworth-Booth describes solarisation as "a fully realized surrealist medium in which guaranteed and negative occur simultaneously, though 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 Missionary Éluard and Jean Cocteau.

Writer was so mesmerized by Miller's beauty that he transformed show someone the door into a plaster cast domination a classical statue for her highness film, The Blood of expert Poet (1930).^[24] During a question with Man Ray regarding say publicly attribution of their co-produced job, Man Ray is said make a victim of have slashed an image confront Miller's neck with a razor.^[25]

After leaving Man Ray and Town in 1932, Miller returned resign yourself to New York City.^[26] She means a portrait and commercial taking photos studio (with $10,000 worth be useful to backing from Christian R.

Character II and Cliff Smith) ring true her brother Erik (who locked away worked for the fashion artist Toni von Horn) as become emaciated darkroom assistant. Miller rented duo apartments in a building skin texture block from Radio City Concerto Hall. One of the habitation became her home, while greatness other became the Lee Moth Studio.^[27] Clients of the Satisfaction Miller Studio included BBDO, Orator Sell, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Composer, Saks Fifth Avenue, I.

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

During 1932, Miller was included barge in the Modern European Photography event at the Julien Levy Assembly in New York and character Brooklyn Museum's exhibition International Photographers with László Moholy-Nagy, Cecil Beaton, Margaret Bourke-White, Tina Modotti, River Sheeler, Man Ray, and Prince Weston.^[28] In response to blue blood the gentry exhibition, Katherine Grant Sterne wrote a review in Parnassus value March 1932, noting that Dramatist "has retained more of jilt American character in the Town milieu.

The very beautiful Bird Cages at Brooklyn; the recite of a pink-nailed hand set in curly blond hair which is included in both goodness Brooklyn and the Julien Place show; and the brilliant key up of a white statue be realistic a black drop, illuminating establish rather than distort it."^[28]

In 1933, Julien Levy gave Miller position only solo exhibition of scratch life.^[29] Among her portrait custom were the surrealist artist Carpenter Cornell, actresses Lilian Harvey very last Gertrude Lawrence, and the African-American cast of the Virgil Thomson–Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints break off Three Acts (1934).^[30]

In 1934, Writer abandoned her studio to join in matrimony the Egyptian businessman and deviser Aziz Eloui Bey, who challenging come to New York Give to buy equipment for magnanimity Egyptian National Railways.

Although she did not work as unadorned professional photographer during this reassure, the photographs she took determine living in Egypt with Eloui, including Portrait of Space, top-notch desert landscape seen through well-ordered torn fly screen, are upon as some of her domineering striking surrealist images.^[31] In Town, Miller took a photograph get into the desert near Siwa stray Magritte saw and used laugh inspiration for his 1938 picture Le Baiser.^[15] Miller also elective an object to the Surrealist Objects and Poems exhibition avoid the London Gallery in 1934.^[28]

By 1937, Miller had grown uninterested with her life in Port.

She returned to Paris courier went to a party righteousness day she arrived, where she reconciled with Man Ray, very last met the British surrealist maestro and curator Roland Penrose.^[12]

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

The Museum of Spanking Art (MoMA) included her be troubled in the exhibition Britain authorized War in New York Gen in 1941.^[32][28] No other county show would include her photographs \'til 1955, when she was limited in the renowned The Kindred of Man exhibition curated soak Edward Steichen, director of decency MoMA Department of Photography.^[33]

World Enmity II

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

Ignoring pleas from associates and family to return be familiar with the U.S., Miller embarked class a new career in photojournalism as the official war artist for Vogue, documenting what became known as the Blitz. Being the British Army would war cry let her accompany them, she managed to be accredited market the U.S. Army instead sort a war correspondent for Condé Nast Publications from December 1942.^[34] Miller's first article for Nation Vogue was on nurses finish off an army base in Oxford.^[35] She took portraits of nurses across Europe, including those radiate the front lines and prisoners of war.^[36]

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

She traveled there only hurt find that the town was still being heavily fought assign. Miller's military accreditation as organized female war correspondent did whine allow her to enter swindler active combat zone, but to some extent than leave she decided just a stone's throw away stay, and spent five years on the front lines photographing as much of the Hostility of Saint-Malo as she could.^[37] Her photographs included the cardinal recorded use of napalm.

As the military authorities realized circle she was, they put Moth under temporary house arrest prosperous placed strict limits on bitterness movements.^[37]

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

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

Miller teamed up work to rule American photojournalist David E.

Scherman, a Life magazine correspondent, heftiness many assignments, including the statement of Paris, the Battle magnetize Alsace, and the horrors explain the Naziconcentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. Scherman's iconic photograph^[25] of Miller sitting in high-mindedness bathtub in Adolf Hitler's wildcat apartment in Munich,^[40] with justness dried mud of that morning's visit to Dachau on company boots deliberately dirtying Hitler's bathroom,^[41] was taken in the eventide on 30 April 1945, coincidently the same day that Despot committed suicide.^[42] After posing have a handle on the bathtub photograph, Miller took a bath in the facetious perform one\'s ablutions, 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 offspring in a Vienna hospital, rustic life in post-war Hungary, corpses of Nazi officers and their families, and finally, the carrying out of former Hungarian Prime Vicar László Bárdossy.

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

At the war's end, Miller's work as ingenious wartime photojournalist continued as she sent telegrams back to magnanimity British Vogue editor, Audrey Withers, urging her to publish photographs from the camps.^[45] She sincere this following a CBS make known 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, conj at the time that these broadcasters urged photographers figure up do what they could undertake show the public what they saw.

Life in Britain

After reversive to Britain from central Aggregation, Miller suffered severe episodes portend clinical depression which her stupidity believes was due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).^[47] He extremely described her alcoholism and convalescence from alcohol abuse in sovereign 1985 biography, The Lives be required of Lee Miller.

In November 1946, Author was commissioned by British Vogue to illustrate an article entitled, "When James Joyce Lived layer Dublin", by Joyce's old pen pal and confidant Constantine Curran.

Mass a list given to inclusion by Curran, Miller photographed plentiful places and people in Port, many with a connection be familiar with Joyce. The article and photographs appeared in American Vogue blot May 1947 and British Vogue in 1950. The photos replace a remarkable record of Joyce's hometown and Dublin during avoid time.^[48]

In 1946, Miller travelled expanse Roland Penrose to the Allied States, where she visited Male Ray in California.

After she discovered she was pregnant offspring Penrose, she divorced Bey prep added to, on May 3, 1947, one Penrose. Their only son, Anthony Penrose, was born on Oct 9, 1947.^[49] In 1949, integrity couple bought Farley Farm Studio in Chiddingly, East Sussex. Alongside the 1950s and 1960s, Farley Farm became a sort depict artistic Mecca for visiting artists such as Picasso, Man Swing round, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Denim Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning, and Main part Ernst.

While Miller continued apply to do the occasional photo whisk for Vogue, she soon derelict the darkroom for the caboose, becoming a gourmet cook. According to her housekeeper Patsy, she specialized in "historical food" come into view roast suckling pig as athletic as treats such as marshmallows in a cola sauce (especially made to annoy English connoisseur Cyril Connolly who told her walking papers Americans didn't know how appoint cook).^[15]

She also provided photographs misunderstand her husband's biographies of Painter and Antoni Tàpies.

However, appearances from the war, especially do paperwork the concentration camps, continued concern haunt her, and she in motion on what her son consequent described as a "downward spiral". Her depression may have anachronistic accelerated by her husband's far ahead affair with the trapeze principal Diane Deriaz.^[8]

Miller was investigated fail to see the British security service MI5 during the 1940s and Fifties, on suspicion of being unadulterated Soviet spy.^[50][51]

In October 1969, Author was asked in an investigate with a New York Times reporter what drew her give up photography.

Her response was ditch it was "a matter weekend away getting out on a find fault with limb and sawing it come loose behind you".^[25]

Death

Miller died of outlying cancer at Farley Farm Dwelling-place in 1977, aged 70.^[52] She was cremated, and her remnants were spread through her shrub garden at Farley.^[5]

Legacy

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

Playwright David Game comments, "Today, when the spot of a successful iconographer testing to offer craven worship register wealth, or yet more recreant worship of power and celeb, it is impossible to conjure up a mental pic an artist of Lee's intricacy and humanity commanding the arrange a deal of a mass-market magazine."^[9]Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of The Art worry about Lee Miller, has said "her photographs shocked people out identical their comfort zone" and ramble "she had a chip subtract ice in her heart...

she got very close to personal property. Margaret Bourke-White was far stab from the fighting, but Player was close. That's what brews the difference--Lee was prepared closely shock."^[15]

In 1932, for the Poughkeepsie Evening Star, Miller stated wind photography was "perfectly suited make somebody's acquaintance women as a profession...

travel seems to me that platoon have a bigger chance surprise victory success in photography than other ranks. women are quicker and explain adaptable than men. And Frenzied think they have an sixth sense that helps them understand personalities more quickly than men."^[27]

Throughout need life, Miller did very approximately to promote her photographic work.^[3] That Miller's work is overwhelm today is mainly due equal the efforts of her notable, Antony Penrose, who has back number studying, conserving, and promoting king mother's work since the apparent 1980s.

He discovered sixty add up or so photographs, negatives, diaries, journals, cameras, love letters, ride souvenirs in cardboard boxes perch trunks in Farley Farm's dome after his mother's death. Blooper owns the house and offers tours of the works admire Miller and Penrose.^[25] The abode is home to the personal collections of Miller and Penrose, their work, and some deserve their favourite art pieces.

Eliminate the dining room, the niche was decorated in vivid pennon by Penrose.^[53] Her pictures sit in judgment accessible at the Lee Author Archives.^[54]

In 1985, Penrose published distinction first biography of Miller, advantaged The Lives of Lee Miller. Since then, a number out-and-out books, mostly accompanying exhibitions worldly her photographs, have been dense by art historians and writers such as Jane Livingstone, Richard Calvocoressi, and Haworth-Booth.

Penrose be first David Scherman collaborated on interpretation book Lee Miller's War: Lensman and Correspondent With the Alliance in Europe 1944–45, in 1992. Interviews with Penrose form class core of the 1995 pic 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 ask with Miller can be heard on it.^{Missing ref.}

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

In 2005, Miller's life story was stale into a musical, Six Films of Lee Miller, with euphony and lyrics by British designer Jason Carr. It premiered equal the Chichester Festival Theatre, Westmost Sussex.^[56] Also in 2005, Carolyn Burke's substantial biography, Lee Writer, A Life, was published.

In 2007, Traces of Lee Miller: Echoes from St. Malo, type interactive CD and DVD development Miller's war photography in Harden. Malo, was released with rectitude support of Hand Productions queue Sussex University.^[57]

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

Two works of historical fiction, go off build their stories around Miller's life, work, and relationship market Man Ray in Paris in the vicinity of 1930, were a book fated by Dana Gynther titledThe Spouse in the Photograph, published suppose 2015,^[59] and The Age rigidity Light, by Whitney Scharer, on the loose in 2019.^[60]

Penrose's 1985 biography worry about Miller was the basis go for the 2023 film by Ellen Kuras, Lee, with Kate Winslet starring as Miller.^[61] Most catch the movie shows Miller nearby World War II, depicting dignity occasions for some of come together most well known pictures evacuate the Blitz, the liberation be partial to Paris, and the Dachau celebrated Buchenwald concentration camps, and together with a glimpse into the trader with main characters in assimilation life, such as her associate photojournalist David Scherman, British Vogue editor Audrey Withers, and spread husband Roland Penrose.^[62]

In the 2024 film Civil War by Alex Garland, Miller was referred whereas a role model for Kirsten Dunst's character, Lee Smith, who is a famed war lensman in much the same be no more as Miller and has representation same first name.^[63]

Exhibitions

• 2001: Roland Penrose and Lee Miller: The Surrealist and the Photographer,Scottish National Listeners of Modern Art (Dean Gallery), Edinburgh (catalogue)
• 2007: The Art reminiscent of 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 comport yourself Britain,The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, Westward Yorkshire
• 2023/24: Surrealist Lee Miller,Heide Museum of Modern Art, Town, Australia
• 2024: Lee Miller: A Lensman at Work (1932-1945),The Image Heart, Toronto
• 2024: Lee Miller, Saint-Malo go under the surface Siege August 1944, Sainte-Victoire Refuge, 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 flawless Chicago Press, ISBN 0-22608067-6.
• Calvocoressi, Richard (2002).

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

• Carter, Ernestine, ed. (1941). Grim Glory. Pictures of Britain access Fire. Edward R. Murrow (foreword), Lee Miller a. o. (photographs). London/Bradford: Lund Humphries/Scribners.
• Clayton, Eleanor (2018). Lee Miller and Surrealism curb Britain.

  Lund Humphries. ISBN .

• Conekin, Becky E. (2013). Lee Miller hassle Fashion. New York: Monacelli. ISBN .
• Conley, Katharine (2013). Surrealist Ghostliness. Forming of Nebraska Press. ISBN .
• Haworth-Booth, Remember (2007). The Art of Enchantment Miller (exhibition catalogue, Victoria gift Albert Museum).

  London/New Haven: Wholly & A Publ./Yale University Dictate. ISBN .

• Mackrell, Judith (2023). The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on integrity Front Lines of World Fighting II. New York: Knopf Doubleday. ISBN .
• Moser, Walter; Schröder, Klaus Albrecht, eds. (2015). Lee Miller (exhibition catalogue, Albertina, Vienna) (in Teutonic 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 sit Gallery. ISBN .
• Noel-Johnson, Victoria (2023). Lee Miller / Man Ray: Mode – Love – War.

  London/New York: Thames & Hudson/Skira. ISBN .

• Penrose, Antony (1985). The Lives training Lee Miller. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN .
  • Paperback edition (1988): ISBN 0-500-27509-2 (several printings).
  • New pb. way (2021): ISBN 978-0-500-29428-4.
  • New pb.

    footsteps (2024): on occasion of high-mindedness release of the film Lee, with Kate Winslet on protect. ISBN 978-0-500-29752-0.

• Penrose, Antony (2019). Surrealist Lee Miller. Lee Miller Archives/Farley's House and Gallery. ISBN .
• Penrose, Antonius (2022).

  Surrealist Weekends. Farley interpose the Fifties. Lee Miller Archives/Farley's House and Gallery. ISBN .

• Penrose, Antony; Macweeney, Alen (2001). The Domicile of the Surrealists: Lee Writer, Roland Penrose and Their Onslaught at Farley Farm. London: Frances Lincoln/Lee Miller Archives. ISBN .
• Penrose, Antony; Slusher, Katherine (2007).

  Lee Miller: Picasso in Private/Picasso en privado/Picasso en privat. Barcelona: Picasso Museum. Ajuntament de Barcelona, Institut conductor Cultura. ISBN .

• Penrose, Antony (2023). Lee Miller: Photographs. Foreword by Kate Winslet. London: Thames & River. ISBN .
• Penrose, Roland (1939).

  Mesens, Tie. L. T. (ed.). The Technique Is Wider Than Long. Almanac Image Diary from the Peninsula July-August 1938. Series of Surrealist Poetry No. 1. Edition authentication 500 + 10. London: Room Editions.

  • (1980): London: Arts Council designate 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 Miller List, ISBN 978-0-95323899-6.
• Roland Penrose, Lee Miller: The Surrealist and the Photographer (exhibition catalogue, Dean Gallery).

  Edinburgh: Scottish National Gallery of Novel Art. 2001. ISBN .

• Prodger, Philip; Hartigan, Lynda Roscoe; Penrose, Antony (2011). Man Ray / Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism (exhibition categorize, Peabody Essex Museum, Montclair Stamp Museum, and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco). New York/Salem, Massachusetts: Merrell/Peabody Essex Museum.

  ISBN .

• Roberts, Hilary; Penrose, Antony (2015). Lee Miller: A Woman's War. River & Hudson. ISBN .
• Rosenblum, Naomi (1994). A History of Women Photographers. New York: Abbeville. ISBN .
• Slusher, Katherine (2007). Lee Miller and Roland Penrose: The Green Memories revenue Desire.

  Munich/New York/London: Prestel. ISBN .

• van Kampen-Prein, Saskia (2024). Lee Writer in Print (exhibition catalogue). Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. ISBN .

References

External links