The Art of Lee Miller

“This is the most scholarly, accessible, and exciting writing on Lee Miller to date.”
---Anthony Penrose, Lee Miller Archives
Lee Miller (1907--1977) was one of the most remarkable photographic artists of the 20th century. She created Surrealist-inspired photographs of haunting originality, portraits of genius, and daring war photographs. This unprecedented book brings together all of Miller’s major vintage prints for the first time, including sensational works never before published, rare and revealing drawings, selections from Miller’s writings as a war correspondent for Vogue magazine, and an extraordinary collage from 1937.
Miller performed with unique success on both sides of the camera. A renowned beauty, she began her career being photographed as a fashion and fine art model by such luminaries as Arnold Genthe and Edward Steichen, stunning examples of which are included in this book. Miller moved to Paris in 1928, determined to take up photography; there she became the apprentice, collaborator, and muse of Man Ray. In the 1930s and ’40s, Miller shot remarkable portraits of such iconic figures as Marlene Dietrich, Charlie Chaplin, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. Turning her Surrealist eye to unexpected photographic subjects, she earned major commissions from American and European fashion magazines and also became a respected photo-journalist. Miller’s startling images of the Dachau concentration camp are among the most powerful records of the Holocaust.
Published in conjunction with the centenary of Miller’s birth, this beautifully designed and produced book is an essential survey of this fascinating woman’s life and career.

During her extraordinary life, Miller came into contact with an astonishing range of painters, sculptors, actors, writers, musicians, fashion designers, and socialites. Many became her friends and the subjects of her penetrating portraits. The finest of these photographs are collected together here, along with a selection of portraits of Miller herself, taken by other photographers. The images include not only Miller's highly perceptive and sympathetic studies of Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire, and others but also her pictures of unsung individuals engaged in war work and powerful photographs of victims and perpetrators of Nazi oppression. 157 duotone illustrations.

With portraits of Chaplin, many of the leading Surrealists, Picasso, Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Henry Moore and many others, Miller's twin eye Rolleiflex produces a very intimate view of the artistic scene in the middle of the 20th century. Some of the pictures were taken in the artist's studio, some in Miller's own studio, but most show the sitters informally and relaxed in mundane surroundings, weaving the mystery of artistic inspiration into the fabric of daily life. Whatever the context, Miller's portraits show the mark of a great artist, with composition, lighting and atmosphere invariably matched to the personality of the sitter. A great deal of her pictures are quite classical in conception, but many are spiced up with an occasional Surrealist wink.

The war pictures are a different matter. When Miller registers the ravages of this savage conflict, irony makes way for tragic grandeur. For example, the portrait of a Nazi suicide, daughther of the Leipzig Mayor, reconnects with the dramatic clair obscur of Carravaggio. Many of the images of wrens and ordinary service men reveal the quiet determination of people amidst a whirlwind of extreme violence. One of the most impressive pictures of this period, and in a sense an untypical one, depicts a murdered German prison guard floating in a canal bounding the Dachau camp, producing a mixture of the bucolic and the tragic which is very moving.

This book is beautifully produced and is a delight to hold in your hands. The captions that go with the pictures are well written and very informative. I would have wished for a more extensive lead essay by Richard Calvocoressi, but maybe we can find more information elsewhere. Pity also that the UK version of this book sports the Hein Heckroth portrait on its cover, which I do not find one of the most attractive pictures in this collection. But these minor quibbles do not detract for this valuable addition to my library.

The story of an extraordinary partnership that inspired and shaped twentieth-century art and photography.

This richly illustrated joint biography tells the story of how a fashion model turned photographer and an English Quaker turned art collector and Surrealist painter influenced modern art with their vision and passion.

As they inspired each other's careers and established their home as meeting place for the exchange of ideas among artists such as Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Paul Ã‰luard, Joan MirÃ³, and Saul Steinberg, Miller and Penrose created a life together that was in itself a work of art. In the book concise accounts of their lives are followed by comparisons of their works, which demonstrate their symbiotic relationship. The range of art reproduced in the book--photographs, sketches, paintings and collages--offers a kaleidoscopic sampling of these two important oeuvres and an exquisite portrayal of a unique and uniquely productive partnership.