Lee Miller was a beautiful woman. She was famous for her glamorous fashion photography and worked with Man Ray, to eventually open her own studio as a Surrealist.
In stark contrast to the beauty of her prior work, her photographs of World War II stand as a mute testimony to man's inhumanity to man.
Whereas the official Lee Miller website indicates she was "probably the only woman combat photo-journalist to cover the war in Eurpope", she was in fact one of several, including Margaret Bourke-White and Dickie Chappelle. But as one of a select few, she brought her artistic sensibilities and her photographic eye to the task of formulating a record of the War.
Elizabeth "Lee" Miller was no stranger to the darkest aspects of humanity. At the age of 7 she was raped and contracted gonorrhea. Subsquently a nude model for her father and brothers, all photographers, she learned the process as well.
A freak near-accident introduced the stunning young woman to Conde Nast, when he pulled her from in front of a car on a Manhattan street. Thus began her modeling career, which put her in front of the camera for a number of years, where she was much in demand. But her creative drive soon led her to pursue her photographic career, including her years with Man Ray, where she was student, lover and muse. Accordingly to numerous sources, many photographs credited to Man Ray were, in fact, Lee's.
Upon leaving Man Ray, and returning to New York, Miller established her own studio and commercial photography business and was a well-known portrait photographer, including among her clients British actress Gertrude Lawrence. Her work was also included in numerous exchibitions. Her commerical endeavor was abandoned when she met, and married, Egyptian businessman, Aziz Eloui Bey.
However, at the outbreak of WWII the two were separated and Miller was living in London with British artist, Roland Penrose (their son, Anthony Penrose authored the books, Lives of Lee Miller and Lee Miller's War).
Her professional association with Conde Nast led to her receiving accreditation as a war correspondent for the U. S. Army at the age of 35. She and Life Magazine correspondent David E. Scherman worked together and he was the photographer of the famous photo of Lee, above, bathing in Hitler's bathtub. Note her boots, which were covered in the mud of Dachau, the liberation of which she witnessed and recorded.
Throughout the War in Europe she recorded the people and the carnage with unerring vision. Her photographs of a field hospital in Normandy contain pictures of her fellow female participants in the war, the field hospital nurses. She was one of the first journalists into the concentration camps, Buchenwald and Dachau. She recorded the devastation of the London blitz, the aftermath of the Normany D-Day landings, the liberation of Paris, numerous battles and likewise recorded the human toll of men, women and children off the battlefield. Not only providing the photographs, she wrote the text that accompanied them. Following the war she remained to catalogue for the world the devastation wrought upon the lands and the people.
While her surrealist taste led her to photograph wrecked pianos, crushed typewriters and mannequins amid the rubble of destruction, it is the photographs of the toll on humanity that resonate to me. Her famous photograph of a dead German SS officer , above,illustrates the quiet power of her work.
Among her husbands and lovers were Shuman, Penrose, Man Ray, Aziz Eloui Bey. Following the war she suffered from Post Traumatic Stress and her later life was complicated by alcohol and her emotional problems. When she discovered she was pregnant with Anthony, who was to be her only child, she married Penrose and the moved to Sussex and lived on Farley Farm, which became a gathering place of artists, but Miller gave up photography for gourmet cooking.
Upon her death from cancer at aged 70, Lee was cremated and her ashes scattered in her herb garden.
Her lack of communication on her life and her war experiences was not to stifle her history. Her son, Anthony, discovered her journals and the negatives of her photographs, thus enabling us to view the world that Lee Miller viewed. Through her talented and tormented eyes.
In addition to Anthony Penrose's books on his mother's work and her life, biographer Carolyn Burke released "Lee Miller, A Life", in 2006.
Other titles by and about Lee Miller, her life and her art include:
The Art of Lee Miller by Mark Haworth-Booth (Yale Univ. Press)
Lee Miller and Roland Penrose: The Green Memories of Desire by Katherine Slusher(Prestel Publishing)
Roland Penrose & Lee Miller: The Surrealist and the Photographer by Penrose & Miller(National Galleries of Scotland)
Lee Miller: Portraits from a Life by Richard Calvocoressi
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