Lee Miller, from Vogue to Dachau
« American photographer (1907-1977), Vogue model, Man Ray's student and lover, war correspondent. »
Born in Poughkeepsie, a Vogue cover model at 19, Lee Miller crossed to the camera side after joining Man Ray in Paris in 1929. With him she rediscovered solarisation, opened her own studio in New York, photographed for Vogue, passed through Surrealism.
A Vogue correspondent during the war, accredited by the U.S. Army, she followed the 83rd Division. She was among the first photographers into Dachau and Buchenwald in April 1945. The photograph of her in Hitler's Munich bathtub, the very evening of his suicide, became legendary.
After the war, Lee Miller faded as a photographer — depression, alcohol — and became a virtuoso cook in the Sussex house she shared with Roland Penrose. Her 60,000 negatives, found in the attic by her son Antony in 1977, revived her critical rediscovery.