Description
Model, muse, war photographer — Lee Miller’s extraordinary life. Carolyn Burke’s acclaimed biography traces Lee Miller from Vogue cover girl and Man Ray’s muse and collaborator in surrealist Paris to one of World War II’s most remarkable combat photographers — a transformation with few parallels in twentieth-century art.
Miller talked her way into US Army accreditation and photographed the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, the siege of St. Malo, and the horrors of Dachau and Buchenwald — including the famous image of herself, filthy from the camps, bathing in Hitler’s own tub in Munich. Burke captures the glamour, the trauma, the fierce talent, and the postwar retreat into English country life, when Miller nearly vanished from history altogether.
Gripping and beautifully written, this is essential for photography lovers and WWII readers — the life of a woman who refused every box she was ever put in, and paid for the refusal.
Model, Muse, Photographer, War Correspondent
nLee Miller: A Life by Carolyn Burke is the definitive biography of one of the most extraordinary women of the twentieth century. Published by Knopf in 2005, it traces Lee Miller’s remarkable journey from a Vogue fashion model in 1920s New York to the Paris studio of Man Ray — where she became his muse, collaborator, and a gifted photographer in her own right at the heart of the Surrealist movement.
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From Surrealism to the Front Lines
nBurke follows Miller as she breaks free to forge an independent career, and then, when World War II erupts, reinvents herself once more — as a Vogue war correspondent. Defying every expectation, Miller documented the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, producing photographs that remain searing and iconic.
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A Life of Courage and Reinvention
nDrawing on interviews, Miller’s letters, and rich archival material, Burke paints a vivid, multidimensional portrait of a woman who refused to be defined by anyone else. Essential reading for lovers of photography, art history, and stories of fearless reinvention.
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