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Art & Photography

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Lee Miller (1907-1977)

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Lee Miller. French Resistance Fighter, Paris, 1944

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Lee Miller. Liberated prisoners at Dachau. 1945

As a war correspondent, Miller saw—and expertly shot—the realities of World War II, from the horrors of Nazi concentration camps to the Liberation of Paris.  Many of her photos look at the war from the perspective of women.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the start of World War II, Miller was living with the artist, Roland Penrose in London. She took a job as a freelance photographer on Vogue, becoming the magazine’s official war correspondent.

Her work as a war photographer began with the Blitz, and, for years to follow—with an accreditation from the U.S. Army—she captured key events like the first use of Napalm and the Battle of Alsace.

 

She also documented the atrocities of the Holocaust, including a graphic glimpse into Bergen-Belsen, the notorious Nazi concentration camp, as a means of revealing the realities of war to the outside world.

 

She took many photos of women in the war including French resistance fighters and displaced families.

 

She wanted to do something. And nobody was going to give her a gun or an airplane, or something useful like that—so she used her camera.

 

Her most well-known work as a war correspondent, however, came in 1945. Hours after Adolf Hitler’s suicide, she entered his apartment in Munich and took a photo in his bath. 

 

Following the war, Miller returned to England. Unfortunately, like countless others on the front lines during World War II, she was diagnosed with clinical depression and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder—both of which likely contributed to her decision to abandon photography for a career in gourmet cooking. 

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Lee Miller. Tired boy and woman. Luxemburg, 1945

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Lee Miller. Two German women on park bench, Cologne, 1945

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Lee Miller, Lee In Hitler's Bath, Munich, 1944

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