Who is Lee Miller? The Vogue Model Turned War Correspondent

 

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Lee Miller – maybe one of the most influential journalists to ever exist.

Her remarkable life, because her work really did dictate the rest of her life, was the storyline for the 2023 film titled, LEE.

Starting out as a model for Vogue, she side-stepped every expectation held for women in the 1920s and pursued her passion for surrealist photography delivering some of the most poignant images from Europe in the throes of the Second World War.

The ambitious American photographer is portrayed by Kate Winslet in the film and the script is based on the book, The Lives of Lee Miller, written by Miller’s son Antony Penrose, and published 1985.

The film, which took eight years to create, mostly focuses on Miller’s professional experiences; however, we are shown a sprinkling of the interesting life she led before venturing to the formidable front lines of the war along with fellow photographer David E Scherman (Andy Samberg).

 

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Miller had a slew of famous friends including pioneer of the Cubist art movement, Pablo Picasso. Her move to London during the war along with Roland Penrose (who she later married) became the lead up to her perilous career photographing the horrific truths of WW2 for Vogue Magazine.

From the siege of St. Malo to revealing the stark reality of the Dachau concentration camp and even posing in Hitler’s bathtub, Lee’s works shocked the world when they were published by the British and US editions of Vogue.

Having a woman report from the front line was a rarity during the mid-twentieth century, but Miller’s unrivalled perseverance to tell the stories of the women affected by Hitler’s Nazi regime showed how talented and dedicated she was to her craft.

She is amongst a list of trailblazing women who changed the trajectory for female war correspondents. Along with the likes of Martha Gellhorn and Thérese Bonney, she broke down barriers preventing women from reporting in war zones.

 

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After discovering the true extent of his mother’s career after her death, Antony Penrose founded the Lee Miller archives to give the public a look into his mother’s work. People can visit the former home of Miller and Penrose, Farley’s House, as it is now a gallery and museum dedicated to the pair’s work.

Although 21st century journalism is still predominantly a male dominated industry, we do see more and more women reporting from conflict zones for major broadcasters. Social media has also been extremely useful in giving journalists a voice.

This couldn’t be more obvious than in the case of Bisan Owda, a Palestinian activist who has been dedicating her time to documenting the effect of the war on Gaza on her country folk.

It is often difficult to watch her footage and pictures that show the true extent of the horrors in the country only someone who is seeing it firsthand could convey.

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