Lee Miller: A Life [Paperback]

Carolyn Burke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0226080676 | ISBN-13: 978-0226080673

Lee Miller’s life embodied all the contradictions and complications of the twentieth century: a model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and domestic goddess, she was also America's first female war correspondent. Carolyn Burke, a biographer and art critic, here reveals how the muse who inspired Man Ray, Cocteau, and Picasso could be the same person who unflinchingly photographed the horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau. Burke captures all the verve and energy of Miller’s life: from her early childhood trauma to her stint as a Vogue model and art-world ingénue, from her harrowing years as a war correspondent to her unconventional marriages and passion for gourmet cooking. A lavishly illustrated story of art and beauty, sex and power, Modernism and Surrealism, Lee Miller illuminates an astonishing woman’s journey from art object to artist.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Miller (1907–1977) began her career as a fashion model, and quickly decamped for Paris, where she became Man Ray's muse and student. After they split, she returned to Manhattan for a brief stint as a studio photographer, but eventually returned to Europe. Her surrealist background led to her taking stunning photos of the London Blitz, but she shot her most memorable—and disturbing—images accompanying American troops from Paris to Dachau as a war correspondent for Vogue. Burke's meticulously detailed biography reveals how keenly Miller's wartime experiences haunted her during her final troubled decades, but it also probes sympathetically into the artist's other significant trauma: a childhood rape, which was, Burke conjectures, exacerbated by her father's practice of photographing her nude well into early adulthood. Burke (Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy) writes with a careful sense of how Miller might have approached her work and of how it is perceived by modern viewers. Her descriptions of Miller's imagery are so vivid that, despite the dozens of photographs reproduced here, readers will find themselves wanting to see more. As the first major biographer outside the Miller family, she traces a dynamic life that embodies the spirit of the 20th century's first half. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Burke is a fluent, illuminating biographer who chooses her subjects wisely. First came poet Mina Loy (Becoming Modern, 1996); now Burke recounts the galvanizing story of Lee Miller. A native of Poughkeepsie, New York, Miller, already a head-turning beauty as a girl, survived the horror of being raped at age seven and maintained a weirdly intimate relationship with her father, who took nude photographs of her for decades. A glamorous phoenix, fearless and defiant, Miller had a knack for securing mentors. A chance encounter with Conde Nast led to her long, fruitful association with Vogue. In Paris, the surrealist Man Ray, who loved her madly and used her image in many works, encouraged her artistic pursuits. But Miller always set her own course and reinvented herself at will, ultimately becoming a gutsy photojournalist in London during the Blitz and one of the first war correspondents to confront the death camps. Miller's experiences are heart-stopping, her virtuoso photographs indelible, but she has been largely overlooked. Now, thanks to Burke's masterful portrayal, readers will know the entire kaleidoscopic life story of this inspiriting survivor, extraordinary photographer, and daring witness to humankind at its dazzling best and monstrous worst. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 446 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (April 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226080676
• ISBN-13: 978-0226080673
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #653,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars not an ordinary life or biography, January 7, 2006

By 

Susan Maresco "suzemaresco" (Santa Cruz, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lee Miller: A Life (Hardcover)

How often do you read a biography that immerses you in the subject's vitality, essence, the dark side and the shining one? Carolyn Burke's astonishing biography of Lee Miller does just this. The reader dives easily into Miller's extraordinary life, from her childhood days in Poughkeepsie to her youth and adulthood as the muse and student of Surrealist artist Man Ray in Paris, to her own career as a model, photographer, and journalist, traveling far and wide for work and pleasure, always with her eye and mind attuned to landscape and nuance, the poetry of any given moment or situation.

Burke's empathic understanding of her subject's psyche allows her to focus on both the inner and outer workings that drove and created Lee Miller's talent, work, and life. There are accompanying photos throughout. This is a biography that reads like a riveting story, as chapter after chapter reveals a complex woman who lived in extraordinary times and was an important and potent contributor to those times. Burke achieves a beautiful balance of details, history, and conversations, so satisfying that you don't want it to stop.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Glamorous Enigma, May 7, 2006

By 

Kcolorado (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lee Miller: A Life (Hardcover)

Lee Miller is an enigma- though Carolyn Burke tells us a lot about her incredible life. As a biography, this is an honorable book. It is comprehensive and tells us about the fabulous life and career of a woman who participated in some of the most exciting times of the 20th century. From NY in the 20s to the Paris of Surrealists in the early 30s, back to NY and then to Egypt and the middle east. By this time Lee Miller was only 30 and some of her greatest adventures were ahead as Vogue's war correspondent and photographer during World War II in Europe. Her work continued during the immediate post war era and Ms. Burke's book illumniates some of the problems of post war Europe, which calls to mind some of the dislocation and problems currently in Iraq.

The portraits in the book make it clear that Lee Miller was a great beauty and the photos she took make it clear she was talented. Yet her precipitous decline after the war and her marriage to Roland Penrose is depressing and hard to figure out. As carefully as Ms. Burke's shares the facts of the book and even her occasional forays into trying to psychoanalyze Lee's motivation, I, like other reviewers found it hard to deciper who Lee really was. A great beauty, a madcap free spirit,a sexually free but emotionally closed woman, a deeply injured child of abuse, an alcohol abuser and indifferent mother to her only child could accurately describe her. Was she a victim of the post war attitudes towards women in the 1950s as she gave up her work to become an uber-housewife and chef in her English country home? It calls to my mind David Hare's play " Plenty" that portrayed the severe dislocation of a woman who had worked in France for the Resistance during WWII and then proceeded to destroy her life and injure those around her in the post war years. Ms. Burke suggest post traumatic stress as a source of Lee's post war problems. As one of the first people to photograph the concentration camps at the end of the war, Lee took breathtaking and disturbing images that affect us today- hard to imagine the affect of actually being there.

Most of the correspondence Ms.Burke quotes made it clear Lee Miller didn't share her deepest feelings with others in letters. Perhaps she didn't in person either- since her son only found out about her wartime work after her death when he discovered boxes of her negatives and photo work. She remains an enigma today. While this biography tells us about her, it can't unlock who she really was beneath the glamour and sadness of her life. I think there is a great movie here.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Life, Still Mysterious, January 31, 2006

By 

Claire B. Zulkey (Chicago, Il USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lee Miller: A Life (Hardcover)

I was thinking about writing this review about halfway through the book, but felt bad about my thoughts towards the end of the book, since my main issue with this biography was what the author strived most to accomplish. Lee Miller led a fascinating life, and Carolyn Burke obviously enjoyed writing about it. But I realized that I never felt like I KNEW Miller, only was following her life. I was aware of what she was doing at each stage of her life, but not necessarily what drove her to do so, or what was going through her mind. I know Burke wanted to look at Lee Miller's life through Lee Miller's eyes, but I never felt that I had that perspective.

I would have loved to see more of the photographs too that Burke described. Those included in the book were wonderful to look at, and there were plenty, but I was hoping to see even more.

I am grateful though that Burke did bring such a fascinating person to light.