Lee Miller: From Vogue to War

Posted by Emily Putnam Emily Putnam April 21, 2022

Lee Miller: From Vogue to War

While some people may believe that "chance" doesn't come to most people, the argument is hard against the beautiful life of Lee Miller. It was 1927 in the streets of busy New York when Lee Miller became a cover girl and a modeling sensation.

Media mogul Condé Nast was one of many great surrealists that crossed Miller's path. Later, as the lover and muse of Man Ray, her face and body were preserved in some of the most striking portraits of the Surrealist age.

However, Lee Miller's life is to be remembered for more than just her natural beauty, but from her daring and brave heart. She is remembered for her work behind the camera, beginning as a fashion photographer for the infamous Vogue, and later, as a photographer in World War II in Europe.

Young Life

Elizabeth "Lee" Miller was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was the middle child of her family, and her parents were Florence and Theodore Miller, a mechanical engineer and avid amateur photographer. She mostly had a privileged childhood in an upper-middle-class and progressive household.

Theodore introduced his daughter to the art of photography, teaching her the basics using his very own Kodak Brownie camera. With this, photography had always been a very present figure in her life. Her modeling career began with her father, where she would pose nude for portraits. Many of these images have since become controversial, as they are viewed as sexualizing a minor, specifically between a father and daughter. However, Miller never made comment on her feelings of the portraits by her father.

Her youth was scarred, however, when she was raped by the guest of a family friend when she was only seven years old.

Early Career

Lee Miller was more than just a pretty face for a camera, in front of or behind. She was a model and muse to several great surrealists of the age. Some being Condé Nast, Man Ray, and Pablo Picasso. In 1927, with the help of Condé Nast, she made the cover of Vogue in an art deco style illustration. This launched her career into the world of fashion.

By 1929, at the age of 24, Miller decided to move to Paris and began working as Man Ray's studio assistant. Beginning professionally, their close-knitted quarters of work turned into a romantic love story. Miller is greatly credited for helping Man Ray invent the "solarization" photographic technique, using black and white hues, creating a halo effect on an image. Continuing to not limit herself, she ran her own portrait studio, taking on commissions for the French edition of Vogue.

A Model of the War

By 1939, a new relationship with Surrealist artist and author, Roland Penrose, who she had met in Paris, convinced Miller to move to London. By this time, the city was facing the weather of World War II.

In the British capital, she met the editor of Vogue, Audrey Withers, where Miller explained her desire to become a photojournalist. The two ladies established a connection, and the magazine went on to publish several photo-essays that Miller crafted, including 1943's "Night Life Now", which read a sub-headline "After dark drama of the work of the Women's Services". This revealed images of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, an all female British Army artillery unit.

With time, Miller's images helped transform the luxury-oriented fashion magazine of Vogue into an outlet for serious news. Arguably, this saved Vogue, who at the time, was struggling to find a place in the war-torn moments of time. In a documentary of Lee Miller's life, Hume shares "Lee was seizing opportunity. So war was an opportunity."

She was just one of four female photographers accredited as official war correspondents with the U.S. Armed Forces.

With Her Eyes and Lens

Lee Miller arrived in Normandy in July of 1944, only a shear month after the Allies launched their invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. No female war correspondents had been allowed to accompany the Allied Expeditionary Force during the initial phase of the invasion, but there Miller was.

Her first assignment was to report on American Army nurses working in a field hospital near Omaha Beach, one of the two American assault beaches. She was present for the battle of St. Malo, which saw the first use of napalm bombing. Later, she was there at the blitz, the chaos following D-Day, the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Alsace, and the U.S. military's entry into Nazi concentration campus at Buchenwald and Dachau. She was one of only a few U.S. army women photographers at the time to see combat.

In 1945, Millers wrote to Withers, "I usually don't take pictures of horrors. But don't think that every town and every area isn't rich with them." Yet, her images of war's most gruesome moments are some of her most memorable photos from the era. Her most famous is a photograph revealing a dead SS guard floating in sunlit water, contrasting the terror of war with the beauty of setting around it.

Breaking The Luxury

The same as now, Vogue had and still holds a reputation for publishing only the glossiest and perfection of fashion and photos, spreading light on women's fashion. Lee Miller's publications to Vogue, however, rank among the most graphic and gruesome ever printed in its pages still to this day.

Miller described her frustration with being torn between fashion photography and photojournalism of the war, claiming "I'm busy making documents, not art." But despite her internal dilemma, she kept shooting.

On April 18, 1945, Miller took a photo of a Nazi official deputy Ernst Kurt Leizpig and his family's suicide at Munich's town hall. The daughter, Regina Lisso, had died by cyanide poisoning, and was shot laying across her parents. When it was published in Vogue, it was accompanied by a text caption applauding the teenager's "extraordinarily pretty teeth" and her nurse's uniform she was wearing.

The Bathtub

As many of her photographs were haunting and memorable, her most memorable photograph was not even hers. Photographer Scherman took a portrait of Lee Miller on April 30, 1945 in the hours following the liberation of Dachau.

Miller and Scherman were present in Hitler's apartment, which had moments before been raided by U.S. soldiers.

This moment, thus, capturing the infamous bathtub photo. They were unaware, however, that that same day would go down in history as the day Hitler allegedly committed suicide.

It was published in Vogue along with an image of similar image of photographer Scherman in the bath, which is now long forgotten about. The scene depicted in the photograph of Miller revealed a "soiled bathmat flanked by a propaganda portrait of the dictator on the tub's edge". It is represented as the "last of the Hitler myth."

After Her Career

After World War II, she continued to contribute to Vogue magazine for 2 more years, covering strictly fashion and celebrities.

She had her first child at the age of 40 with her husband, but suffered spouts of depression and alcoholism.

According to her family in a documentary of her life, those in her circle encouraged Miller to promote her work further, but she refused. They claimed she wanted to move on, and "wanted to forget".

What Makes Lee Miller

Lee Miller was an American artist who refused to be defined in life by her gender, beauty or age. She did not limit herself to one practice, as she was a model in front of and behind the camera, as well as a muse to many famous surrealists that are still remembered and admired today. She was one of the only female war correspondents to be credentialed during WWII, showing nothing less of true impact, honor and bravery.

Miller was a fierce and fiery independent and bohemian women, while society was still stuck in their ways of restricting traditional gender roles. Her life and work was varying, innovative, and inspiring to all journalists and females of the world.