Elizabeth “Lee” Miller was born on April 23, 1907. She had a bizarre childhood. She was raped at age 7 and contracted a venereal disease. Her father was an amateur photographer who used her as his model. Some of the pictures were of her nude. She was expelled from almost every school she attended. At age 18, she moved to Paris. She studied lighting, costume, and design at an art school. She returned to New York City after a year. One day, she was saved from being hit by a car by a man who turned out to be the publisher of Vogue magazine. He hired her. She became one of the most sought-after models in the city. A photo of her was used, without her permission, by Kotex to advertise their feminine product. She became known as the “Kotex girl” and it ended her modeling career. She moved to Paris in 1929 and became the model, collaborator, and lover of surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Through him she met Picasso and other famous artists. She learned a lot from Ray and when she went back to NYC, she opened her own photography studio in 1932. Two years later, she married an Egyptian and moved to his country. The marriage was not successful, so she moved back to Paris in 1937. In 1939, she moved to England and became Vogue’s official war photographer. She was in London for the Blitz. She was in England for two years. Her work highlighted the contributions of women to the war effort. She did a photo essay on nurses treating terrible wounds. The essay was entitled “Unarmed Warriors”. The gritty and realistic photos were thought by her editor to be too harsh for the public, but when the essay was published in Vogue the article was a big hit. She also took pictures of the women of a searchlight battery. Here is her description of the nurses:
For an hour or so I watched lives and limbs being saved, by skill, devotion and endurance. Grave faces and tired feet passed up and down the tent aisles. We discussed whether doubling the staff of doctors and nurses would relieve them of overwork — it seemed not, as everyone by his own volition would still do double his duty.
After D-Day, she managed to get herself assigned to Normandy. Women correspondents were forbidden to be in combat zones. She was allowed to go to St. Malo because it supposedly had been taken. It turned out the battle was still raging. She embedded herself with the 83rd Infantry Division. She was the only correspondent for most of her time there. The 83rd Infantry Division took good care of her and gave her rides to hot spots, warnings of incoming fire, and the best views of the action. The battle was one of the most furious of the liberation of France. She wrote about one of the first uses of napalm against the German defenders. (That report was censored.) She got a picture of Gen. von Aulock as he surrendered. Near the end of the battle, she was put under house arrest for violating the rules. Here is how she described what she saw:
Machine gun fire belched from the end pillbox – the men fell flat – stumbling and crawling into the shelter of shell holes – some crept on, others sweeping back to the left of the guns’ angle, one man reaching the top. […] There was silence – poised – desperate. I could hear yells from slopes – orders – directions with nightmare faintness. There was a great black explosion where the most forward men had been a minute before. Cézembre was firing on her sister fortress – shells which would not penetrate or injure the occupants but which could blast our men, who were oozing down the escarpment – and sliding down the path which they had so painfully climbed.
Vogue sent her to the liberated Paris, although she wanted to stay with the 83rd during its campaign across France. The fashion magazine wanted her to do stories about what Parisian women were wearing! She found the city weird as on one block the people would be celebrating and a block away there would be fighting. Here is what she said about the atmosphere in the city:
Paris had gone mad. The long, graceful, dignified avenues were crowded with flags and filled with screaming, cheering, pretty people. Girls, bicycles, kisses and wine, and around the corner sniping, a bursting grenade and a burning tank. The bullet holes in the windows were like jewels, the barbed wire in the boulevards a new decoration, and the wrecked German war machines were playboxes for urchins who had watched these same tanks in action the night before. (the picture is of women whose heads were shaved because they were friendly with German soldiers)
She visited Picasso who had spent the whole war in his apartment. He was forbidden to exhibit his “degenerative” painting by the Germans. She returned to the front and was there for the liberation of Buchenwald. She was there for the linkup of Americans and Soviets at Torgau. She photographed survivors of Dachau. She knew the importance of those pictures. She had to convince Vogue that what she saw at the concentration camps was real. She spent some time in Munich and actually stayed in Hitler’s apartment. There is a picture of her taking a bath in Hitler’s bathtub. (note the dirty boots and the rug) It was her first bath in weeks. She slept in his bed. She ended her war at Berchtesgaden. Here is what she wrote about Buchenwald:
The six hundred bodies stacked in the courtyard of the crematorium because they had run out of coal the last five days had been carted away until only a hundred were left; and the splotches of death had been washed from the wooden potato masher because the place had to be disinfected; and the bodies on the whipping stalls were dummies instead of almost dead men who could feel but not react. The subterranean hospital was really and seriously working, but the one hundred and fifty who died every day were still being shoved into a room off the ward.
After the war, she suffered from PTSD which manifested itself in clinical depression and alcoholism. She shifted from photography to gourmet cooking. She died at age 70. She is now recognized as one of the greatest female war correspondents. She encouraged other war photographers to not just shoot pictures but to use those photos to give “context to the events.”
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