Book Description

The remarkable and unconventional Lee Miller was one of the twentieth century's most accomplished photographers. At the age of twenty, she was discovered on a New York street by Condé Nast, who instantly decided to put her face on the cover of Vogue. Two years later she left America for Paris to become a photographer herself. There she became the disciple and lover of Man Ray and an intimate of the Paris art world. World War II saw her as Vogue's war correspondent, present at the liberation of Paris and when the Dachau concentration camp was first entered. Her later years were spent in London and at her home on the Sussex downs, where she kept up the many friendships she had made.

Miller came into contact with a wide range of people: painters, sculptors, actors, novelists, poets, journalists, musicians, dancers, and leaders in the field of fashion. She photographed them all, and many became close friends. In Lee Miller: Portraits from a Life, the finest of these photographs are shown together for the first time. They include not only perceptive and sympathetic portraits of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Dora Maar, Fred Astaire, Marlene Dietrich, Igor Stravinsky, Yehudi Menuhin, Dylan Thomas, Colette, and a host of others but also pictures of Londoners in the Blitz, of Parisians celebrating their liberation, and of the aftermath of the Third Reich. An exhibition based on this show will be held at the Getty in 2003. 135 duotone photographs. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A marvellous memento
Now that we have definitively entered into a troubled 21st century, I am developing a weird kind of nostalgia for the equally troubled previous one. This book, a marvellous memento of the period between 1930 and 1960, does everything to fuel this ambiguous attraction.

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.

A truly captivating, highly recommended gallery
Compiled and captioned by Richard Calvocoressi (Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh), Lee Miller: Portraits from a Life is an amazing collection of memorable and visually impressive black-and-white photographs taken by the extraordinary fashion model and professional photographer Lee Miller, who began to study the craft of capturing life with a camera in Paris during 1929. A complete range of Lee Miller's moving and inspirational photographs is presented, with each with a brief caption offering a little background on the setting and people. A significant contribution to any personal, professional, academic, or community library Photography reference collection, Lee Miller: Portraits From A Life a truly captivating, highly recommended gallery showcasing the work of a very remarkable and talented woman. ... Read more

Book Description

Lee Miller: 1927: New York. Classically beautiful, she is discovered by Cond Nast and immortalized by Steichen, Hoyningen-Huene, Horst, and other famous photographers. Lee Miller: 1929: Paris. Protg and lover of Man Ray, she invents with him the solarization technique of photography and develops into a brilliant Surrealist photographer. Lee Miller: 1939-45: Europe. She becomes a U.S. war correspondent and covers the liberation of Paris. Her photographs of the Dachau concentration camp shock the world. These are but three of the many lives of Lee Miller, intimately recorded here by her son, Antony Penrose, whose years of work on her photographic archives have unearthed a rich selection of her finest work, including portraits of her friends Picasso, Braque, Ernst, luard, and Mir. To these are added many other photos that complement Penrose's highly readable biography of this uniquely talented artist. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

a friendly bio
First I want to state that this is a very fine biography, the author (Miller's son) does an admirable job of showing the many different sides and personalities of a multi-gifted woman whose life spanned the tumultuous revolution of women's roles in society. But Lee Miller led a very complicated and somewhat contradictory life and the author manages (artifully, I admit)to avoid probing too deeply into the dark corners that would truly flesh out her life. There are crucial points in the book where a gentle fog of vagueness creeps in where an objective biographer would have strove for clarity, i.e. what exactly was the nature of her relationship with her father? He clearly had a huge role in her life and career (he began photographing her nude at a very early age)but the treatment of their relationship is ginger to say the very least. But issues outside the family are well covered, inside not so much. So to sum up, a good general bio but it is neither too critical nor too in depth on certain issues. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Statesman (1996), published by New Statesman, Ltd. on January 13, 2003. The length of the article is 1088 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Miller's tale: Jan Morris is unmoved by a collection of portraits lacking the "flash of poetry". (Photogrphy).
Author: Jan Morris
Publication: New Statesman (1996) (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 13, 2003
Publisher: New Statesman, Ltd.
Volume: 132Issue: 4620Page: 39(3)

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Reviews (1)

Lee Miller: model, photographer, free spirit, war journalist
Lee Miller began as one of the most in-demand fashion models of the 20's and 30's. A friend and lover of Man Ray, she proved to be an extremely talented and inventive photographer (with Man Ray, she invented solarization). One of the most beautiful women who ever lived, her life is fascinating and, at times, shocking. In her youth, her father used her as a subject for his own nude studies. Later on, she proved to be a sexual free spirit whose associations tended toward the promiscuous. She has been to bed with many famous men and never allowed any man to dominate her. (Not for long, anyway.) As her looks faded, she turned more and more to photography and, as World War II came along, to photo journalism. There is no hint of femininity in her war work: Her images of death and destruction are just as stark and horrifying as those of any male photographer. After the war (and perhaps because...who knows?), she gave up photography almost entirely, devoting the last part of her life to family life and travel. Like her contemporary (also a photographic genius of the first rank) George Hoyningen-Huene, Lee Miller has almost been forgotten. Luckily, like Hoyningen-Huene, she is being rediscovered and what remains of her work is being lovingly presented in fine editions like this one. Another good work is "The Lives of Lee Miller" by her son, Anthony Penrose. I regard this book as a "must have" for anyone interested in the history and development of photography. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Statesman (1996), published by New Statesman, Ltd. on March 5, 1999. The length of the article is 542 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: War photographer and model Lee Miller, who was raped at the age of seven, perceived sex as a thing with no responsibilities attached. This belief has influenced her work, which is full of sexual elements, and relationships with men.

Citation Details
Title: Sense and sensuality.(review of `The Lives of Lee Miller' written by Antony Penrose)
Author: Charles Darwent
Publication: New Statesman (1996) (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 5, 1999
Publisher: New Statesman, Ltd.
Volume: 129Issue: 4426Page: 41(2)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more