Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller (1907-1977) was an American photographer, model and artist.
Born in New York, she had a traumatic childhood. At age seven, she was raped by a family acquaintance and contracted a sexually transmitted disease.
Her modelling career began first with her father, an amateur photographer, for whom she posed nude throughout her adolescence. “He took pictures of her that to our eyes are very dubious,” fashion editor Marion Hume says in Capturing Lee Miller, a 2020 documentary.
In 1927, by coincidence, Miller met publisher Condé Nast, who discovered her on the street in Manhattan. The encounter led to Miller’s first major break in the fashion world.
That same year, her face would grace the cover of Vogue in an Art Deco-style illustration by George Lepap. She soon became one of the most sought-after models of the era.
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She moved to Paris in 1929, where she met Man Ray, a Surrealist artist and photographer. Miller became his muse, lover and collaborator, becoming an accomplished photographer in her own right.
Together, they developed the solarisation technique, a process that produces a halo-like effect around the subject that became a hallmark of Surrealist photography. Miller fell in with a circle of modernists that included Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dalí.
Miller’s early work was originally characterised by a blend of technical skill and an avant-garde approach to composition and subject matter. Her photographs often explored themes of identity, the female form and the subconscious.
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Miller’s career took a dramatic shift with the outbreak of World War II. She moved to London in 1939, where she became one of the few female war correspondents accredited by the US Army, documenting the war’s devastation across Europe for Vogue.
Her images of the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald are some of the most powerful visual records of the era.
Miller’s legacy consists of over 60,000 images and documents, from Surrealist photography and Vogue fashion editorials to World War II photojournalism and portraits.
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READ MORE: Watch the trailer for war photographer biopic ‘Lee’
