The incredible life of Lee Miller, photographer of beauty and horror

by Camille Bois-Martin.

In the mid-1920s, at just 18 years old, destiny came knocking at Lee Miller’s door: the American, yearning for a bohemian life and the streets of Paris where she had studied art, found herself face-to-face with Condé Nast’s director on the streets of New York. Narrowly avoiding a car accident as she crossed the road, she met the press tycoon, who saw in her all the rebellious beauty and energy of the Roaring Twenties. On a whim, he launched her modeling career, quickly securing her appearances in his major fashion magazines – even placing her on a cover just months after they met.

From model to fashion photographer

Spending endless hours in front of the camera, Lee Miller soon grew curious about what happened behind it, from lighting to framing. She abandoned modeling to throw herself into photography, learning alongside Edward Steichen, for whom she had previously posed. However, between perfume shoots and polished fashion spreads, she felt stifled and decided to return to Paris, armed with a recommendation letter to train with none other than Man Ray.

More than just a student, she quickly became part of the vibrant artistic scene of the time. Her playful spirit and undeniable charm fascinated the Surrealists, and she became one of their muses. Jean Cocteau transformed her into a Greek statue in his short film The Blood of a Poet (1932); she also posed for Paul Éluard and Pablo Picasso, moving freely among these giants while honing her own artistic voice.

Lee Miller’s photographs, infused with surrealist freedom

Introduced into the Surrealist circle by Man Ray, Lee Miller entered a deep (and often toxic) relationship with the artist. She posed for him, often nude or adorned with surreal accessories, all the while continuing to publish her own work in French fashion magazines.

If she again played the role of muse, the creative alchemy of their relationship pushed her to experiment more boldly with photography, seizing the liberating spirit that Surrealism offered women. From her abstract, symmetrical nudes to the portrait of model Tanja Raam under a glass dome, and the striking image of Charlie Chaplin shot from below beneath a chandelier, the early 1930s marked a time of unbridled creativity for Lee Miller.

The Second World War and the beginnings of her career in photojournalism

After a failed marriage and a stay in Cairo, Lee Miller moved to England in 1937, where the brutal reality of World War II soon caught up with her. Though she initially resumed fashion photography, the nonconformist soon proposed something radical to the magazines: photo reports on a London battered by the Blitz (1941). The raw impact of her images steered her toward photojournalism and led her to France in 1944, assigned to cover women’s lives during wartime in Saint Malo. Yet the city was far from pacified: fighting was only just beginning when she arrived, and Miller found herself under sniper fire.

The only photographer present – and one of only four women accredited to cover the war – Miller documented the horror of battle with an unflinching eye: dead horses littering the streets, smoke clouds billowing over explosions, terrified soldiers and civilians alike.

The adrenaline rush and her desire to share the harsh truth drove Lee Miller to continue as a war correspondent. She reached a freshly liberated Paris in 1944, capturing scenes of wild celebration alongside disturbing images of lynchings.

The first photographer inside Hitler’s apartment

“It pains me to return to Paris now that I’ve developed a taste for gunpowder,” Miller wrote in her correspondence. That bitter feeling drove her eastward with her friend, reporter David Scherman, leading to encounters with unimaginable atrocities. She photographed the liberation of Dachau concentration camp: lost prisoners, Nazi officers’ bodies floating in rivers, piles of corpses… Miller captured everything without flinching, preserving the horrors for posterity.

Just hours later, she headed to Munich, clutching a crumpled note she had carried for months: the address of Hitler’s private apartment. Alongside Scherman, Miller became one of the first reporters to enter the dictator’s personal quarters, mere hours before Hitler took his life in Berlin. They photographed American soldiers lounging in his bed, sitting at his desk – and then staged one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. Exhausted and grimy from Dachau, Lee Miller stripped in Hitler’s bathroom and bathed in his tub, muddy boots discarded on the plush bath mat, while an official portrait of Hitler loomed overhead.

A posthumous resurrection

This heavy, symbolic photograph was nearly forgotten, along with the rest of Miller’s wartime work. After her death in 1977, ravaged by alcoholism and depression, her son Anthony Penrose stumbled upon a treasure trove in their family home’s attic: hundreds of his mother’s photographs stashed away in old soap and bean boxes. Fashion shoots, surrealist experiments, war reportage… her legacy emerged from decades of silence born of trauma, which had forced Miller to abandon photography altogether. Penrose’s discovery sparked a massive effort to recognize Lee Miller’s work. He penned her biography, fueling the resurgence of exhibitions and inspiring Ellen Kuras’s film, Lee Miller, starring Kate Winslet and airing on Canal+ this Tuesday, April 29.

Lee Miller (2024) by Ellen Kuras, starring Kate Winslet, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, and Marion Cotillard, airing on Canal+ on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.