A Lee Miller Story: Model, friend of Picasso, Man Ray lover and war photojournalist (Part I)

5 min readSep 7, 2021

Today I bring you Lee Miller, born in 1907 in the state of New York and died in 1977. Professional model by accident, friend of Picasso, MANRAY Lover, war reporter … had a fascinating vital trajectory

Let me tell you, little Lee was raped when she was a 7 year old girl. It is said that everything happened during a familiar meeting.

To help her overcome her trauma, she of her her own father of her began to photograph her naked. She wanted her not to be ashamed of her body.

A psychiatrist who came to recommended the girl who, from now on, separate the sex of love. Sex was a mechanical act that had no greater transcendence. Lee applied the advice, something that the future couples of her (some alphagas males) would take pretty badly.

Maid in an environment that valued art and culture, the little girl received a gift that would make her first steps in the middle.

(The Kodak Brownie, a camera dedicated to the domestic market).

But Lee did not count on the turns that gives her life. The melancholy and serene beauty of her became a model.
In fact, she was the first woman who lent her image in an ad for menstruation.

Lee was not ashamed of her body and, when “the happy twenty years” arrived (1920), she had no problem in posing for different artists.

She traveled to Paris and there she became friends with guys like Salvador Dalí, Max Ernest, Jean Coucteau, Dorothea Carrington, etc.

The surrealists worshiped her. Lee became Musa de Man Ray while he maintained relationships with diverse people. I really like the images that come now; They are from a picnic in France. I think the spirit of freedom is captured.

I want to say that the photos already tell everything. And one understands how attractive it had to be to participate in the surreal movement. In fact, Lee would slow down those crazy years later.

And so full of laughter. She collaborated with Man Ray, she finished as the Rosary of the Aurora. She had learned to be a good photographer, and she began to ecliparley … either he had very well the sexual freedom of her. They broke and separated.

In another radical turn to her life, Lee went away even more from the glamor to finish converted into war reporter. Some of her images of her disaster look like frames of a surreal movie, like this German guard who float inert in a river.

Lee took iconic images about the contest. And she was one of the first war reporters to visit concentration camps such as Dachau. For me, she is still a mystery.

How can you go from being an elite model to a suffered war reporter? She’s her own son spoke of the dark impulses of her mother, from her depressions, her alcoholism. Because Lee did not come back from the Dachau concentration camp being her itself.

They say that she ordered a telegram to the middle of her warning them that the photos she was going to send were real.From that time I like this image in a special way. Read by giving a bath.

In Hitler’s house in Munich. Fixed in the details: the military boots at the foot of the bathtub, the fatigue look of it.

In Hitler house, bathroom with military boots

I save the photos of Dachau, of course. But if you want to track it in the work of it, you can pull the Internet. There are fantastic things. This is just an appetizer.

There are lives that run a full bow. And Lee Miller is one of them. I hope you liked it. Thanks for your attention.
The relationship of Man Ray and Lee Miller (Musa and Master) would give for several books. As it seems, they coincided again in a Party in London in 1975.