Open Culture Newsletter posted about Lee Miller, photographer, the other day.
In late-twenties Manhattan, a nineteen-year-old woman named Elizabeth “Lee” Miller stepped off the curb and into the path of a car. She was pulled back to safety by none other than the magnate Condé Nast, founder of the eponymous publishing company. Not long thereafter, Miller, who’d been studying at the Art Students League of New York, appeared on the cover of Vogue. It’s tempting to call this the first major episode of a charmed life, though that descriptor fits uneasily with the arc of her seventy years, during the last few decades of which she could never quite recover from having witnessed first-hand the liberation of the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau — sights she shared with the American public as a war photographer.
Miller took pictures of not just the concentration camps, but also events like the London Blitz and the liberation of Paris. At the end of the war, she posed for an even more famous picture, bathing in Hitler’s tub on the very same day that the Führer later shot himself in his bunker.
The Wikipedia article is more detailed about her life... HERE.
Thanks for that. I was aware of many of her photos, but didn't previously understand how the various strands of her work fitted in with her life story. YouTube is a useful resource for anyone interested in the history of photography.
ReplyDeleteI learned a lot about her life. I'd been interested in the Sabattier-effect since studies in photography for my BFA in the 80s. I always liked when other photographers could get it to happen.
DeleteThank you, Barbara, for sharing this video which gave me an insight into the works of Lee Miller. I was familiar with her name but learned so much more. She was a very multi-faceted and talented photographer and artist. Her war time images of the concentration camps were very haunting.
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