Lee Miller: Model, Photographer, and War Correspondent in Vogue, 1927-1953

In the winter of 1927, Lee Miller, 20 years old, was crossing a street in Manhattan, when she was almost hit by an oncoming car. Luckily for her, Condé Nast, stopped her from crossing. He offered her a job modelling at his New York magazine. That was the beginning of Miller's association with Vogue magazine, the publication she worked for in New York, Paris and London for the next 26 years. Two years later she was living in Paris as Man Ray's model, muse and apprentice. By 1930 she was appearing in Paris Vogue as both model and photographer. After other adventures, in 1942 Miller became British Vogue's official war correspondent. Throughout the war she submitted extraordinary photojournalism to Vogue. She supplied pieces on everything from Henry Moore working as an official war artist in Underground air-raid shelters to the liberation of the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald, as well as herself being photographed in Hitler's bathtub at his deserted Munich residence. After the war she reported on Eastern Europe for a few years, but by 1947 she was back in London, pregnant with only child and doing occasional, primarily fashion, photography for British Vogue. Her penultimate piece for them was an extremely witty article entitled “Working Guests” published in 1953, accompanied by her photographs. Miller's career with Vogue, on both sides of the camera and as a writer is the focus of this article.
Miller was unique in that she moved easily from one side of the camera to the other – from model to photographer and then even to writer. Combining theoretical interventions most familiar to art historians and film theorists, with rigorous archival work, the piece reads Miller’s images and articles, as no one has done before. The piece is truly interdisciplinary and relevant to scholars in gender studies, histories of art, fashion, photography, design, twentieth century Europe, and cultural studies.

Abstract:

In the winter of 1927, Lee Miller, 20 years old, was crossing a street in Manhattan, when she was almost hit by an oncoming car. Luckily for her, Condé Nast, stopped her from crossing. He offered her a job modelling at his New York magazine. That was the beginning of Miller's association with Vogue magazine, the publication she worked for in New York, Paris and London for the next 26 years. Two years later she was living in Paris as Man Ray's model, muse and apprentice. By 1930 she was appearing in Paris Vogue as both model and photographer. After other adventures, in 1942 Miller became British Vogue's official war correspondent. Throughout the war she submitted extraordinary photojournalism to Vogue. She supplied pieces on everything from Henry Moore working as an official war artist in Underground air-raid shelters to the liberation of the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald, as well as herself being photographed in Hitler's bathtub at his deserted Munich residence. After the war she reported on Eastern Europe for a few years, but by 1947 she was back in London, pregnant with only child and doing occasional, primarily fashion, photography for British Vogue. Her penultimate piece for them was an extremely witty article entitled “Working Guests” published in 1953, accompanied by her photographs. Miller's career with Vogue, on both sides of the camera and as a writer is the focus of this article.

Dr. Becky E. Conekin is Senior Research Fellow and Principal
Lecturer in Historical and Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion, the University of the Arts. She is the author of The Autobiography of a Nation: The 1951 Festival of Britain (Manchester Studies in Design: 2003) and the co-editor of The Englishness of English Dress (Berg: 2002)
and Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain 1945–1964
(Rivers Oram: 1999).