Lee Miller, a one-of-a-kind photographer portrayed by Kate Winslet

Within the mid-Twenties, at simply 18 years outdated, future got here knocking at Lee Miller’s door: the American, craving for a bohemian life and the streets of Paris the place she had studied artwork, discovered herself face-to-face with Condé Nast’s director on the streets of New York. Narrowly avoiding a automobile accident as she crossed the street, she met the press tycoon, who noticed in her all of the rebellious magnificence and vitality of the Roaring Twenties. On a whim, he launched her modeling profession, shortly securing her appearances in his main trend magazines – even putting her on a canopy simply months after they met.

From mannequin to trend photographer

Spending countless hours in entrance of the digicam, Lee Miller quickly grew interested by what occurred behind it, from lighting to framing. She deserted modeling to throw herself into pictures, studying alongside Edward Steichen, for whom she had beforehand posed. Nevertheless, between fragrance shoots and polished trend spreads, she felt stifled and determined to return to Paris, armed with a advice letter to coach with none apart from Man Ray.

Greater than only a pupil, she shortly turned a part of the colourful creative scene of the time. Her playful spirit and plain attraction fascinated the Surrealists, and he or she turned certainly one of their muses. Jean Cocteau reworked her right into a Greek statue in his brief movie The Blood of a Poet (1932); she additionally posed for Paul Éluard and Pablo Picasso, transferring freely amongst these giants whereas honing her personal creative voice.

Lee Miller’s images, infused with surrealist freedom

Launched into the Surrealist circle by Man Ray, Lee Miller entered a deep (and sometimes poisonous) relationship with the artist. She posed for him, typically nude or adorned with surreal equipment, all of the whereas persevering with to publish her personal work in French trend magazines.

If she once more performed the position of muse, the artistic alchemy of their relationship pushed her to experiment extra boldly with pictures, seizing the liberating spirit that Surrealism supplied girls. From her summary, symmetrical nudes to the portrait of mannequin Tanja Raam below a glass dome, and the placing picture of Charlie Chaplin shot from under beneath a chandelier, the early Nineteen Thirties marked a time of unbridled creativity for Lee Miller.

The Second World Battle and the beginnings of her profession in photojournalism

After a failed marriage and a keep in Cairo, Lee Miller moved to England in 1937, the place the brutal actuality of World Battle II quickly caught up together with her. Although she initially resumed trend pictures, the nonconformist quickly proposed one thing radical to the magazines: photograph stories on a London battered by the Blitz (1941). The uncooked impression of her pictures steered her towards photojournalism and led her to France in 1944, assigned to cowl girls’s lives throughout wartime in Saint Malo. But the town was removed from pacified: combating was solely simply starting when she arrived, and Miller discovered herself below sniper fireplace.

The one photographer current – and certainly one of solely 4 girls accredited to cowl the struggle – Miller documented the horror of battle with an unflinching eye: lifeless horses littering the streets, smoke clouds billowing over explosions, terrified troopers and civilians alike.

The adrenaline rush and her want to share the tough reality drove Lee Miller to proceed as a struggle correspondent. She reached a freshly liberated Paris in 1944, capturing scenes of untamed celebration alongside disturbing pictures of lynchings.

The primary photographer inside Hitler’s condominium

“It pains me to return to Paris now that I’ve developed a style for gunpowder,” Miller wrote in her correspondence. That bitter feeling drove her eastward together with her buddy, reporter David Scherman, resulting in encounters with unimaginable atrocities. She photographed the liberation of Dachau focus camp: misplaced prisoners, Nazi officers’ our bodies floating in rivers, piles of corpses… Miller captured every thing with out flinching, preserving the horrors for posterity.

Simply hours later, she headed to Munich, clutching a crumpled be aware she had carried for months: the tackle of Hitler’s non-public condominium. Alongside Scherman, Miller turned one of many first reporters to enter the dictator’s private quarters, mere hours earlier than Hitler took his life in Berlin. They photographed American troopers lounging in his mattress, sitting at his desk – after which staged one of the iconic pictures of the Twentieth century. Exhausted and dirty from Dachau, Lee Miller stripped in Hitler’s lavatory and bathed in his tub, muddy boots discarded on the plush bathtub mat, whereas an official portrait of Hitler loomed overhead.

A posthumous resurrection

This heavy, symbolic {photograph} was almost forgotten, together with the remainder of Miller’s wartime work. After her dying in 1977, ravaged by alcoholism and melancholy, her son Anthony Penrose stumbled upon a treasure trove of their household house’s attic: lots of of his mom’s images stashed away in outdated cleaning soap and bean bins. Vogue shoots, surrealist experiments, struggle reportage… her legacy emerged from many years of silence born of trauma, which had pressured Miller to desert pictures altogether. Penrose’s discovery sparked an enormous effort to acknowledge Lee Miller’s work. He penned her biography, fueling the resurgence of exhibitions and provoking Ellen Kuras’s movie, Lee Miller, starring Kate Winslet and airing on Canal+ this Tuesday, April 29.

Lee Miller (2024) by Ellen Kuras, starring Kate Winslet, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, and Marion Cotillard, airing on Canal+ on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.