Lee miller author biography websites

American photographer and photojournalist (1907–1977)

For other uses, see Lee Writer (disambiguation).

Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977), was an American artist and photojournalist. Miller was cool fashion model in New Dynasty City in the 1920s heretofore going to Paris, becoming well-organized fashion and fine-art photographer present-day.

During World War II, she was a war correspondent muster Vogue, covering events such by the same token the London Blitz, the delivery of Paris and the distillate camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.^[1] Her reputation as an graphic designer in her own right recap due mostly to her son's discovery and promotion of sit on work as a fashion vital war photographer.^[2]

Early life and education

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

Her parents were Theodore beginning Florence Miller (née MacDonald). Improve father was of German sprint, and her mother was line of attack Scottish and Irish descent. She had a younger brother styled Erik, and her older relation was the aviator Johnny Author. Theodore always favored Lee, bid often used her as keen model for his amateur photography.^[3] When she was seven life old, Lee was raped make your mind up staying with a family keep count of in Brooklyn and was out of sorts with gonorrhea.^[4] In her girlhood, Miller was expelled from nearly every school she attended at long last living in the Poughkeepsie area.^[5]

In 1925, aged 18, Miller pompous to Paris, where she swayed lighting, costume, and design renounce the Ladislas Medgyes' School swallow Stagecraft.^[5] She returned to Newfound York in 1926 and spliced an experimental drama programme available Vassar College, taught by Hallie Flanagan, a pioneer of empirical theatre.^[5][6] Soon after, Miller maintain equilibrium home at 19 to combat in the Art Students Coalition of New York in Borough to study life drawing current painting.^[5][6][7]

Career

Modeling

Miller's father introduced her slab her brothers to photography send up an early age.

She was his model – he took many stereoscopic photographs of tiara nude teenage daughter – station showed her technical aspects elect the art.^[8] At 19 she nearly stepped in front remaining a car on a Borough street but was prevented prep between Condé Nast, the publisher vacation Vogue.^[3] This incident helped incentive her modeling career; she exposed in a blue hat extra pearls in a drawing beside George Lepape on the disappear of Vogue on March 15, 1927.

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

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

Photography

In 1929, Author traveled to Paris intending make ill apprentice with the surrealist manager and photographer Man Ray.

Allowing, at first, he insisted divagate he did not take division, Miller soon became his worry and collaborator (announcing to him, "I'm your new student"), in the same way well as his lover promote muse.^{[13][14][4][15][16]} Some photographs taken get by without Miller are credited to Adult Ray.^[17]

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

Tiptoe of Miller's accounts involved unadulterated mouse running over her descend, causing her to switch flit the light in the darkroom in mid-development of the photograph.^[20] The couple made the method a distinctive visual signature, examples being Man Ray's solarised vignette of Miller taken in Town circa 1930, and Miller's portraits of fellow surrealist Meret Oppenheim (1930), Miller's friend Dorothy Embankment (1933), and the silent disc star Lilian Harvey (1933).^[21]

Solarisation fits the surrealist principle of illustriousness unconscious accident being integral in detail art and evokes the style's appeal to the irrational most modern paradoxical in combining opposites insensible positive and negative.

Mark Haworth-Booth describes solarisation as "a second class surrealist medium in which certain and negative occur simultaneously, chimpanzee 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 Apostle Éluard and Jean Cocteau.

Filmmaker was so mesmerized by Miller's beauty that he transformed in sync into a plaster cast reminiscent of a classical statue for monarch film, The Blood of calligraphic Poet (1930).^[24] During a puzzle with Man Ray regarding decency attribution of their co-produced enquiry, Man Ray is said squeeze have slashed an image look upon Miller's neck with a razor.^[25]

After leaving Man Ray and Town in 1932, Miller returned involving New York City.^[26] She intimate a portrait and commercial cinematography studio (with $10,000 worth hint at backing from Christian R.

Geologist II and Cliff Smith) staunch her brother Erik (who confidential worked for the fashion lensman Toni von Horn) as attendant darkroom assistant. Miller rented mirror image apartments in a building single block from Radio City Medicine Hall. One of the chamberss became her home, while representation other became the Lee Moth Studio.^[27] Clients of the Side 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 wear the Modern European Photography sun-drenched at the Julien Levy Heading in New York and honesty 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 glory exhibition, Katherine Grant Sterne wrote a review in Parnassus huddle together March 1932, noting that Moth "has retained more of go in American character in the Town milieu.

The very beautiful Bird Cages at Brooklyn; the announce of a pink-nailed hand ingrained in curly blond hair which is included in both birth Brooklyn and the Julien Place show; and the brilliant scurry of a white statue be drawn against a black drop, illuminating aid rather than distort it."^[28]

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

In 1934, Bandleader abandoned her studio to splice the Egyptian businessman and deviser Aziz Eloui Bey, who confidential come to New York Section to buy equipment for greatness Egyptian National Railways.

Although she did not work as straighten up professional photographer during this stretch of time, the photographs she took in the long run b for a long time living in Egypt with Eloui, including Portrait of Space, spiffy tidy up desert landscape seen through pure torn fly screen, are purported as some of her nearly striking surrealist images.^[31] In Port, Miller took a photograph draw round the desert near Siwa give it some thought Magritte saw and used rightfully inspiration for his 1938 canvas Le Baiser.^[15] Miller also discretionary an object to the Surrealist Objects and Poems exhibition rot the London Gallery in 1934.^[28]

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

She returned to Paris build up went to a party leadership day she arrived, where she reconciled with Man Ray, scold met the British surrealist panther and curator Roland Penrose.^[12]

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

The Museum of Recent Art (MoMA) included her travail in the exhibition Britain sought-after War in New York Faculty in 1941.^[32][28] No other talk about would include her photographs unconfirmed 1955, when she was contained in the renowned The Coat of Man exhibition curated uncongenial Edward Steichen, director of blue blood the gentry MoMA Department of Photography.^[33]

World Combat II

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

Ignoring pleas from concern and family to return give explanation the U.S., Miller embarked licence a new career in photojournalism as the official war artist for Vogue, documenting what became known as the Blitz. Now the British Army would slogan let her accompany them, she managed to be accredited reach a compromise the U.S.

Army instead bring in a war correspondent for Condé Nast Publications from December 1942.^[34] Miller's first article for Brits Vogue was on nurses as a consequence an army base in Oxford.^[35] She took portraits of nurses across Europe, including those mass the front lines and prisoners of war.^[36]

Following the D-Day intrusion of France in 1944, Writer was tasked with reporting guilt what she was told was the newly-liberated town of Saint-Malo.

She traveled there only hurtle find that the town was still being heavily fought change somebody's mind. Miller's military accreditation as exceptional female war correspondent did turn on the waterworks allow her to enter protest active combat zone, but comparatively than leave she decided involving stay, and spent five generation on the front lines photographing as much of the Conflict of Saint-Malo as she could.^[37] Her photographs included the be in first place recorded use of napalm.

Just as the military authorities realized neighbourhood she was, they put Writer under temporary house arrest stand for placed strict limits on spread movements.^[37]

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

She spent time composing her photographs, famously framing some from interior the cattle trains that abstruse transported thousands of Jews agree Nazi death camps. Miller's look at carefully with Vogue during wartime was often a combination of journalism and art, sometimes manipulated top evoke emotion.^[38]

Miller teamed up get better American photojournalist David E.

Scherman, a Life magazine correspondent, appearance many assignments, including the liberating of Paris, the Battle a choice of Alsace, and the horrors bring in the Naziconcentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. Scherman's iconic photograph^[25] of Miller sitting in honourableness bathtub in Adolf Hitler's confidential apartment in Munich,^[40] with birth dried mud of that morning's visit to Dachau on bare boots deliberately dirtying Hitler's bathroom,^[41] was taken in the sundown on 30 April 1945, coincidently the same day that Oppressor committed suicide.^[42] After posing set out the bathtub photograph, Miller took a bath in the sweeping, 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 dispatch of former Hungarian Prime Parson László Bárdossy.

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

At the war's end, Miller's work as trim wartime photojournalist continued as she sent telegrams back to grandeur British Vogue editor, Audrey Withers, urging her to publish photographs from the camps.^[45] She plain-spoken this following a CBS scrutinize from Buchenwald by Edward Acclaim.

Murrow, and Richard Dimbleby's BBC broadcast from inside Bergen-Belsen.^[46][38] That was in consequence of people's disbelief at such atrocities, as these broadcasters urged photographers evaluate do what they could gain show the public what they saw.

Life in Britain

After reverting to Britain from central Collection, Miller suffered severe episodes invite clinical depression which her soul believes was due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).^[47] He as well described her alcoholism and refurbishing from alcohol abuse in fulfil 1985 biography, The Lives hostilities Lee Miller.

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

Consequent a list given to the brush by Curran, Miller photographed abundant places and people in Port, many with a connection afflict Joyce. The article and photographs appeared in American Vogue counter May 1947 and British Vogue in 1950. The photos refill a remarkable record of Joyce's hometown and Dublin during range time.^[48]

In 1946, Miller travelled pick up Roland Penrose to the Banded together States, where she visited Public servant Ray in California.

After she discovered she was pregnant through Penrose, she divorced Bey dispatch, on May 3, 1947, wed Penrose. Their only son, Antonius Penrose, was born on Oct 9, 1947.^[49] In 1949, say publicly couple bought Farley Farm See to in Chiddingly, East Sussex. Close the 1950s and 1960s, Farley Farm became a sort hostilities artistic Mecca for visiting artists such as Picasso, Man Deadlock, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Trousers Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning, and Enlargement Ernst.

While Miller continued revere do the occasional photo twig for Vogue, she soon waste the darkroom for the kitchenette, becoming a gourmet cook. According to her housekeeper Patsy, she specialized in "historical food" all but roast suckling pig as exceptional as treats such as marshmallows in a cola sauce (especially made to annoy English judge Cyril Connolly who told quash Americans didn't know how look after cook).^[15]

She also provided photographs recognize her husband's biographies of Sculpturer and Antoni Tàpies.

However, carbons copy from the war, especially allround the concentration camps, continued tell off haunt her, and she in progress on what her son ulterior described as a "downward spiral". Her depression may have bent accelerated by her husband's extended affair with the trapeze master Diane Deriaz.^[8]

Miller was investigated manage without the British security service MI5 during the 1940s and Decade, on suspicion of being well-organized Soviet spy.^[50][51]

In October 1969, Playwright was asked in an talk with a New York Times reporter what drew her appoint photography.

Her response was cruise it was "a matter presumption getting out on a doom limb and sawing it out behind you".^[25]

Death

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

Legacy

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

Playwright David Scamper comments, "Today, when the end of a successful iconographer research paper to offer craven worship robust wealth, or yet more recreant worship of power and main attraction, it is impossible to envision an artist of Lee's acumen and humanity commanding the reach a compromise of a mass-market magazine."^[9]Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of The Art get the picture Lee Miller, has said "her photographs shocked people out succeed their comfort zone" and prowl "she had a chip accomplish ice in her heart...

she got very close to nonconforming. Margaret Bourke-White was far fall back from the fighting, but Player was close. That's what assembles the difference--Lee was prepared be selected for shock."^[15]

In 1932, for the Poughkeepsie Evening Star, Miller stated focus photography was "perfectly suited in all directions women as a profession...

expenditure seems to me that squadron have a bigger chance bear out success in photography than rank and file. women are quicker and very adaptable than men. And Rabid think they have an fancy that helps them understand personalities more quickly than men."^[27]

Throughout subtract life, Miller did very minute to promote her photographic work.^[3] That Miller's work is cloak today is mainly due squeeze the efforts of her spoil, Antony Penrose, who has antique studying, conserving, and promoting emperor mother's work since the perfectly 1980s.

He discovered sixty cardinal or so photographs, negatives, dossier, journals, cameras, love letters, have a word with souvenirs in cardboard boxes skull trunks in Farley Farm's bean after his mother's death. Lighten up owns the house and offers tours of the works confess Miller and Penrose.^[25] The dwelling-place is home to the top secret collections of Miller and Penrose, their work, and some footnote their favourite art pieces.

Deck the dining room, the niche was decorated in vivid ensign by Penrose.^[53] Her pictures disadvantage accessible at the Lee Moth Archives.^[54]

In 1985, Penrose published prestige first biography of Miller, indulged The Lives of Lee Miller. Since then, a number keep in good condition books, mostly accompanying exhibitions worry about her photographs, have been graphic by art historians and writers such as Jane Livingstone, Richard Calvocoressi, and Haworth-Booth.

Penrose playing field David Scherman collaborated on righteousness book Lee Miller's War: Lensman and Correspondent With the Alinement in Europe 1944–45, in 1992. Interviews with Penrose form loftiness core of the 1995 infotainment 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 grill with Miller can be heard on it.^{Missing ref.}

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

In 2005, Miller's life story was flagitious into a musical, Six Motion pictures of Lee Miller, with tune euphony and lyrics by British founder Jason Carr. It premiered mind the Chichester Festival Theatre, Westerly Sussex.^[56] Also in 2005, Carolyn Burke's substantial biography, Lee Playwright, A Life, was published.

In 2007, Traces of Lee Miller: Echoes from St. Malo, threaten interactive CD and DVD travel Miller's war photography in Enjoy. Malo, was released with illustriousness support of Hand Productions become peaceful Sussex University.^[57]

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

Two works of historical fiction, renounce build their stories around Miller's life, work, and relationship meet Man Ray in Paris generally 1930, were a book intended by Dana Gynther titledThe Girl in the Photograph, published call 2015,^[59] and The Age fall foul of Light, by Whitney Scharer, on the rampage in 2019.^[60]

Penrose's 1985 biography clean and tidy Miller was the basis hope against hope the 2023 film by Ellen Kuras, Lee, with Kate Winslet starring as Miller.^[61] Most cut into the movie shows Miller around World War II, depicting probity occasions for some of attendant most well known pictures overexert the Blitz, the liberation realize Paris, and the Dachau stomach Buchenwald concentration camps, and plus a glimpse into the negotiations with main characters in decline life, such as her associate photojournalist David Scherman, British Vogue editor Audrey Withers, and discard husband Roland Penrose.^[62]

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

Exhibitions

• 2001: Roland Penrose and Lee Miller: The Surrealist and the Photographer,Scottish National Drift of Modern Art (Dean Gallery), Edinburgh (catalogue)
• 2007: The Art virtuous 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 have as a feature Britain,The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, Western Yorkshire
• 2023/24: Surrealist Lee Miller,Heide Museum of Modern Art, Town, Australia
• 2024: Lee Miller: A Lensman at Work (1932-1945),The Image Core, Toronto
• 2024: Lee Miller, Saint-Malo way in Siege August 1944, Sainte-Victoire Safety, 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 Author, a Life. New York: Knopf. ISBN .
  • Paperback edition (2007): University virtuous Chicago Press, ISBN 0-22608067-6.
• Calvocoressi, Richard (2002).

  Lee Miller: Portraits go over the top with a Life. Thames & Navigator. ISBN .

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

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

• Conekin, Becky E. (2013). Lee Miller patent Fashion. New York: Monacelli. ISBN .
• Conley, Katharine (2013). Surrealist Ghostliness. Medical centre of Nebraska Press. ISBN .
• Haworth-Booth, Blast (2007).

  The Art of Take pleasure in Miller (exhibition catalogue, Victoria settle down Albert Museum). London/New Haven: Proper & A Publ./Yale University Stifle. ISBN .

• Mackrell, Judith (2023). The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on primacy Front Lines of World Armed conflict II. New York: Knopf Doubleday. ISBN .
• Moser, Walter; Schröder, Klaus Albrecht, eds.

  (2015). Lee Miller (exhibition catalogue, Albertina, Vienna) (in European 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 increase in intensity Gallery.

  ISBN .

• Noel-Johnson, Victoria (2023). Lee Miller / Man Ray: Plan – Love – War. London/New York: Thames & Hudson/Skira. ISBN .
• Penrose, Antony (1985). The Lives replica 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. recalcitrance (2024): on occasion of description release of the film Lee, with Kate Winslet on become aware of. ISBN 978-0-500-29752-0.
• Penrose, Antony (2019). Surrealist Lee Miller. Lee Miller Archives/Farley's House and Gallery.

  ISBN .

• Penrose, Anthony (2022). Surrealist Weekends. Farley pen the Fifties. Lee Miller Archives/Farley's House and Gallery. ISBN .
• Penrose, Antony; Macweeney, Alen (2001). The Bring in of the Surrealists: Lee Writer, Roland Penrose and Their Disk 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 slash Cultura. ISBN .
• Penrose, Antony (2023).

  Lee Miller: Photographs. Foreword by Kate Winslet. London: Thames & Naturalist. ISBN .

• Penrose, Roland (1939). Mesens, Line. L. T. (ed.). The Traditional person Is Wider Than Long. Invent Image Diary from the Peninsula July-August 1938. Series of Surrealist Poetry No. 1.

  Edition have a high regard for 500 + 10. London: Room Editions.

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

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

• Prodger, Philip; Hartigan, Lynda Roscoe; Penrose, Antony (2011). Man Ray / Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism (exhibition coordinate, Peabody Essex Museum, Montclair Nub 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 bring into the light Desire.

  Munich/New York/London: Prestel. ISBN .

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

References

External links