The Fearless Lee Miller: Fashion, Surrealism And The Horror

“It was a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you.”

– Lee Miller

 

Lee Miller (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977), the American socialite, fashion model, photographer and war correspondent who famously took a dip in Hitler’s bath, was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1907. She moved to Paris at age 20 years old, and embarked on a career on both sides of the lens.

 

Collaborating with her lover, the expatriate American Surrealist artist Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976), Miller co-invented darkroom techniques and furthered the playful group dynamics that made Surrealism such an innovative force in European culture between the World Wars.

 

In 1934, she married Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey and relocated to Cairo. They divorced in 1947, but while still married Miller “settled down” in 1939 with Sir Roland Penrose (14 October 1900 – 23 April 1984), the British artist. The couple moved to Hampstead in London, where she became staff photographer for Vogue magazine.

 

Then came the war. After surviving The Blitz, Miller joined the fight against the antisemitic Nazi machine and became accredited with the United States Army in 1944–45. She witnessed the horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau, and chronicled the war in extensive written and photographic dispatches from the German front.

 

Following the war, Miller remade herself once more, gaining renown in England as a chef and gardener, while quietly continuing to lead an artistic life through her final years. Lee Miller died in 1977 on the East Sussex farm she owned.

 

Images via: Lee Miller: Fearless at Art Institute Chicago.