Surrealist Women: Lee Miller

Lee Miller-1931

Fashion model, muse, Surrealist photographer, war correspondent, writer and later Lady Penrose, chatelaine of Farley Farm House in East Sussex where the darkroom had turned into a kitchen where she perfected dishes for visiting artists including Picasso, her former lover Man Ray, Eileen Agar, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning; Lee Miller was one of the most exceptional people to have engaged with the Surrealist movement.

After reporting and photographing the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau, Miller photographed dying children in a Viennese hospital and covered the execution of the Hungarian Prime Minister. The war took its toll on Miller, however, after returning to England she would frequently experience severe bouts of depression, haunted by the atrocities she had witnessed in the concentration camps.

Below is a photograph taken just hours after leaving Dachau; in Hitler’s apartment Miller is naked in his bathtub. Her boots are covered with the muck and grime of Dachau and have soiled the bathmat. A few hours later Hitler and Eva Braun would commit suicide in the bunker.

Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bathtub-David Scherman 1945