David E. Scherman, Equipped for War, London, 1943
© Lee Miller Archives, England.
© Lee Miller Archives, England.
Lee Miller (1907-1977) grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and her startling beauty led her in 1927 to model for American Vogue. Miller was a charismatic and outgoing woman whose friendships with the fashion photographers George Hoyningen-Huene and Edward Steichen encouraged a passion for photographic studies that had grown from her father’s interest in amateur photography.
Having developed her technical skills, Miller moved to Paris in 1929 where she persuaded Man Ray to accept her as his student. Many prints from this flourishing period of creativity are available for sale including the remarkable example of the solarisation technique that Miller developed with Man Ray as seen in one of her most iconic photographs Solarised Portrait of Unknown Woman, Paris 1930.
Having succeeded in setting up her own studio in Paris, Miller returned to New York in 1932 where she continued her practice before moving to Cairo with her husband, wealthy Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey. New experiences of unfamiliar landscapes and culture led Miller to immerse herself in photography and prints from this period such as the famous Portrait of Space, 1937, are prime examples of her greatest accomplishments. Central to her life and inspiration remained the artists she had met in Europe and during a visit to Paris in 1937 she met Roland Penrose, the Surrealist artist who was to become her second husband.
In 1939 she left Egypt for London shortly before World War II broke out, and moved in with Roland Penrose, defying orders from the US Embassy to return to America. She subsequently took a job as a freelance photographer on Vogue and popularised the new style of location fashion photography, many examples of which are for sale.
In 1942 she signed up as a US war correspondent, producing startling images of the siege of St. Malo, the liberation of Paris, and the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. Miller continued to report from post-war Europe before returning to England in 1947, where she produced her captivating portraits of the frequent visitors to their home, including Picasso, Braque, and Miro, before retreating completely from her turbulent life in photography.
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