Photos of a woman who switched from modeling to photographing the horrors of war
The life of Lee Miller is full of bright and fateful episodes. At age seven, Miller was abused. At 19 she became a model. After twenty, she was the muse of the legendary photographer Man Ray. At 30, Pablo Picasso himself painted her portrait. When Miller was 38, the famous photograph was taken of her posing in Adolf Hitler's bathroom.
Lee Miller was born in New York and it was there that she became a fairly successful model. She then went to Paris, where she began photography, studying with the famous Man Ray. The girl also became interested in surrealism - at this time she met Pablo Picasso, Paul Eluard and Jean Cocteau.
During World War II, Lee lived in London, and despite pleas from friends to return to a safer America, she became a photojournalist for Vogue, covering such significant events as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the horrors at the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau.
Lee Miller made a much greater contribution to history as a photojournalist than as a model. Women occupied a central place in her photographs: at first they were staged photographs for fashion magazines, then they reflected the consequences of military conflict throughout Europe. Lee Miller even became one of the twenty photographers who made the most significant contribution to the photographic history of those times.
After the end of the war, she continued to cover events for Vogue for a couple of years, after which she moved to England, unable to work due to severe post-traumatic stress disorder, which she acquired during the war.
Lee Miller's most famous photograph was taken from Hitler's bathroom. The picture was taken in Munich in 1945. The camera was held by Miller's friend David Scherman, while the composition of the image was entirely directed by Miller. A portrait of Adolf Hitler is neatly placed on the edge of the bathtub, a kitschy statue sits on the other side of the bathtub, and muddy shoes sit on the floor. These boots were worn by Lee Miller when she visited the Dachau concentration camp earlier that day. The dirt on the rug is dirt from a concentration camp.
At the end of 1946, Lee Miller returned to the USA, where her home became a kind of Mecca for creative people. Picasso, Man Ray and other celebrities visited there. From time to time, Lee Miller took photographs, but still began to devote most of her time to her only son and her passion for cooking. She was still tormented by nightmare memories of the war, especially what she saw in the concentration camps. She suffered from periodic depressions, while US domestic authorities began to suspect her of being a spy.
Lee Miller died at the age of 70 from cancer. Her ashes were scattered over the house where she lived with her family in America.