Lee Miller

Lee Miller (born April 23, 1907, Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.—died July 21, 1977, Farley Farm House, near Chiddingly, East Sussex, England) was an American photographer, Surrealist artist, and model who might have been known primarily as the muse and lover of the Surrealist artist Man Ray had her son not discovered and promoted her exceptional work as a fashion and war photographer and recovered her reputation as an artist in her own right.

Early life

Miller’s first encounter with photography was with her father, Theodore. An amateur photographer, he owned a Kodak Brownie and a stereoscope, had a home darkroom, and taught her the basics of the craft. By and large, Miller had a privileged and happy childhood. However, at age seven, while visiting relatives, Miller was raped by a family friend, leaving her not only traumatized but also with gonorrhea, a disease that at that time was treated with invasive procedures that she endured with some regularity through adulthood. Her father subsequently began taking photographs of her—and continued to do so into her 20s—in which he had her pose nude, images that seem disturbing and inappropriate. Although she was forced to deal with the psychological and physical repercussions of these incidents, Miller was exceptionally beautiful, bright, and independent—qualities that opened up many opportunities for her throughout her life.

Education and modeling career

Miller struggled in school and with finding direction in her studies. Initially interested in theatre, she studied lighting and set design at the newly opened L’École Medgyés pour la Technique du Théâtre in Paris for seven months. Then she briefly joined the Experimental Theatre at Vassar College and took dance lessons and performed in New York City. In 1926, at age 19, she left home for good, began modeling, and enrolled in the Art Students League in Manhattan, where she studied life drawing and painting. That winter she met magazine publishing magnate Condé Nast when he saved her from being hit by oncoming traffic. Impressed by her beauty, he took her in to be a model for Vogue. She was on the cover of the American and British editions in March 1927. Miller was photographed by the notable fashion photographers Arnold Genthe, Nickolas Muray, and Edward Steichen. Unfortunately, a photograph taken by Steichen was placed in a Kotex feminine products ad (1928–29), which was somewhat scandalous and embarrassing for her. Soon after the ad ran, Miller left New York City for Paris.

Solarization and relationship with Man Ray

In Paris, Miller sought out Man Ray and for three years lived with him as his student, collaborator, muse, and lover. He taught her photography, and in 1929 they developed and worked on solarization, a technique that reversed the negative and positive parts of a photo and produced halolike outlines that enhanced the lights and darks. Man Ray created some of his most-recognized works while he was involved with and collaborating with Miller, including Observatory Time—the Lovers (c. 1931), which features Miller’s lips. While Miller was in Paris, she met many artists—Paul Éluard, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miró—and photographed all of them. She also met Jean Cocteau, a Surrealist artist and rival of Man Ray, who cast her in the leading role in his first film, Le Sang d’un poète (1930–32; The Blood of a Poet). She and Man Ray split up, and Miller returned to New York City in 1932.

Celebrity portraiture, surrealist photographs, and advertising work

Back in New York City, Miller set up a photo studio with her younger brother, Erik. Her training in theatrical lighting came in handy when installing the necessary equipment and electrical wiring in her studio. She began doing celebrity portraiture, surrealist photographs, and advertising work. She also continued to model for and began photographing for Vogue. In at least one instance she was both the artist and the subject for a Vogue fashion spread, Self-Portrait in Headband (1933). In 1934 Miller married Aziz Eloui Bey, an Egyptian railroad magnate, and went to live in Cairo with him. There she photographed the pyramids, the desert, villages, and ruins. She took trips on her own to Paris, and during one visit in 1937 she met the British Surrealist artist Roland Penrose. They fell in love, traveled together, and visited famous artists around Europe. They spent time with Picasso, who painted Miller six times, including Portrait of Lee Miller as L’Arlésienne (1937). In 1939 she left Bey and moved to London to be with Penrose. The next year Miller photographed London during and after the Blitz—as the German wartime night raids on Britain’s industrial centers came to be called—a series that was published in Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire (1941), with a preface by the American news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. Miller also became a prolific contributor of articles and photography to British Vogue.

War correspondent for Vogue

By 1943 Miller had become an accredited war correspondent for Vogue, and the following year she teamed up with Life photojournalist David E. Scherman. Together they followed the 83rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army as it advanced on the front lines. Miller became the first female photojournalist to do so. She photographed the Liberation of Paris, the battle of Saint-Malo, field hospitals in Normandy, and the liberation of both the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. Her photographs, some of the first photographic evidence of the Holocaust, were a horrifying glimpse of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the camps. From Dachau she and Scherman went to Hitler’s private apartment in Munich. She had Scherman photograph her washing herself in Hitler’s bathtub, her muddy boots on the bathmat. In 1945 Miller traveled throughout eastern Europe to see and photograph the devastating aftermath of the war.

Later life and work

Despite a struggle with depression, alcoholism, and what is now recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder following the war, she returned to London and continued to take photographs, especially of artists and writers, such as Yves Tanguy, Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Wifredo Lam, Dylan Thomas, and Isamu Noguchi. She married Penrose in 1947 and at age 40 became pregnant and gave birth to her son, Antony. Two years later Miller and Penrose bought Farley Farm House in East Sussex, where they hosted artists and writers, many of whom she photographed in casual and intimate settings, in particular Picasso, who had a close relationship with each member of the family. Miller’s final piece for Vogue (July 1953) was titled “Working Guests,” and it showed such art world figures as the director of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art Alfred H. Barr, Jr., feeding the pigs on their farm. Miller assisted Penrose, who was writing biographies of artists, by photographing his subjects, including Picasso and Antoni Tàpies. In the early 1950s Miller finished with photography and reinvented herself as a gourmet cook, attending the Cordon Bleu in Paris. She hosted Surrealist dinner parties and made wildly experimental dishes, serving her guests foods such as green chicken or blue fish, the latter said to have been inspired by Miró.

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Posthumous recognition

After Miller died of cancer, her son and his wife discovered some 60,000 negatives, 20,000 prints and contact sheets, documents, and writings boxed up in the attic of Farley Farm House. From the 1980s Antony Penrose, who had known nothing of his mother’s photography career, worked to archive and promote her work, which had been largely forgotten by the art world. Through his efforts, she became the subject of several exhibitions, biographies, and monographs. Lee, a film about her life starring Kate Winslet, was released in 2023.