American-born artist Lee Miller (1907-1977) has been increasingly championed by scholars and curators for her Surrealism-inspired photographs. Her captivating images of Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s, her dreamlike portraits of desert landscapes and sexually suggestive architecture taken in Egypt in the mid-1930s, and her witty, yet often disturbing, photographs of the Second World War and its aftermath have been widely discussed. However, while popular interest in Miller’s colourful life and photographic work has been rapidly growing during the past forty years, her true worth as a prominent Surrealist artist has been somewhat overlooked. This new collection of essays addresses this issue, revalidating Lee Miller’s Surrealist position, not simply as a muse, friend, and collaborator with the Surrealists, but as one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential female Surrealist artists.

American-born artist Lee Miller (1907-1977) has been increasingly championed by scholars and curators for her Surrealism-inspired photographs. Her captivating images of Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s, her dreamlike portraits of desert landscapes and sexually suggestive architecture taken in Egypt in the mid-1930s, and her witty, yet often disturbing, photographs of the Second World War and its aftermath have been widely discussed. However, while popular interest in Miller's colourful life and photographic work has been rapidly growing during the past forty years, her true worth as a prominent Surrealist artist has been somewhat overlooked. This new collection of essays addresses this issue, revalidating Lee Miller's Surrealist position, not simply as a muse, friend, and collaborator with the Surrealists, but as one of the twentieth century's most important and influential female Surrealist artists.

Image based book on the Surrealist photography of Lee Miller. Essay of approx 7500 words by her son Antony Penrose included and extended captions supplied for 100 images.

Lee Miller (1907-1977) moved to London in the late 1930s, just as a rich strand of Surrealist practice was burgeoning in Britain. Miller was central to its development and prolonged life after World War II, exhibiting alongside British Surrealists such as Eileen Agar and Henry Moore in often overlooked London exhibitions. This book is the first to present Lee Miller's photographs of, and collaborations with key British Surrealists alongside their artworks, to tell the story of this exciting cultural moment. Miller's photographs of noted continental Surrealists such as Max Ernst and E.L.T Mesens, taken while they were working and exhibiting in Britain, also feature alongside their works, documenting their enduring friendships with Miller and her husband, the artist Roland Penrose. Miller's interdisciplinary photographic practice acted as a conduit for the dispersal of Surrealist images out of the realm of fine art and into the worlds of fashion, commercial photography and journalism. A vital study for all students and enthusiasts of Surrealism and those enthralled by the enigmatic Lee Miller, this book reveals the social and cultural networks in which she was embedded, offering a holistic view of her work and the life of the Surrealist movement in Britain. Exhibition: The Hepworth, Wakefield, UK (22.06.-07.10.2018).

Fashion model, surrealist artist, muse, photographer, war correspondent—Lee Miller defies categorization. She was a woman who refused to be penned in, a free spirit constantly on the move from New York to London to Paris, from husbands to lovers and back, from photojournalistic objectivism to surrealism. Midcareer, she made the unprecedented transition from one side of the lens to the other, from a Condé Nast model in Jazz Age New York to fashion photographer, creating stunning images that imbued fashion with her signature wit and whimsy. Miller became a celebrated Surrealist under the tutelage of her lover, Man Ray, and then joined the war effort during World War II, documenting everything from the liberation of concentration camps to the daily life of Nazi-occupied Paris. Miller was recognized as “one of the most distinguished living photographers” during her hey-day as a fashion photographer, but an astonishing number of these images have remained unpublished. Lee Miller in Fashion is the first book to examine how her career as a model and fashion photographer illuminates her life story and connects to international fashion history from the late 1920s until the early 1950s. The world of fashion emerges as the backbone of Miller’s creative development, as well as an integral lens through which to understand the effects of war on the lives of women in the 1940s and 1950s. Miller witnessed incredible acts of resistance born out through fashion—and her photographic record of women’s indomitable spirit even in times of war has remained an invaluable resource in fashion and global history. Lee Miller in Fashion presents these striking archival fashion photographs as well as contact sheets, memos, and Miller’s published illustrations, vividly setting the wit, irrepressible creativity, and daring of Miller within the larger story of women’s experience of fashion, art, and war in the twentieth century. “In all her different worlds, she moved with freedom. In all her roles, she was her own bold self.” —Antony Penrose

“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.

A trenchant yet sympathetic portrait of Lee Miller, one of the iconic faces and careers of the twentieth century. Carolyn Burke reveals Miller as a multifaceted woman: both model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and mother, and, in later years, gourmet cook—the last of the many dramatic transformations she underwent during her lifetime. A sleek blond bombshell, Miller was part of a glamorous circle in New York and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as a leading Vogue model, close to Edward Steichen, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso. Then, during World War II, she became a war correspondent—one of the first women to do so—shooting harrowing images of a devastated Europe, entering Dachau with the Allied troops, posing in Hitler’s bathtub. Burke examines Miller’s troubled personal life, from the unsettling photo sessions during which Miller, both as a child and as a young woman, posed nude for her father, to her crucial affair with artist-photographer Man Ray, to her unconventional marriages. And through Miller’s body of work, Burke explores the photographer’s journey from object to subject; her eye for form, pattern, and light; and the powerful emotion behind each of her images.A lushly illustrated story of art and beauty, sex and power, Modernism and Surrealism, independence and collaboration, Lee Miller: A Life is an astute study of a fascinating, yet enigmatic, cultural figure.