Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1907 Poughkeepsie, United States of America

Died: 1977 Chiddingly, United Kingdom

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Other name/s: Lady Penrose, Elizabeth Miller

Biography

Photographer Elizabeth Miller was born in April 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA into a family with German, Scottish and Irish descent. Her father introduced her to photography and played a significant role in influencing her career path. At the age of 16, she moved to New York, where she was discovered by Vogue publisher, Condé Nast. After appearing on the magazine’s cover - illustrated by Art Deco designer George Lepape - she quickly became a sought-after model for two years. However, this fame led her to realise that she preferred being behind the camera rather than in front.

In 1929, she travelled to Paris to apprentice with the Surrealist artist Man Ray, marking the beginning of her career in photography. Upon meeting Ray, she insisted he take her on as an apprentice. He agreed, and the two became lovers and creative collaborators. Miller was both Ray’s muse and artistic partner. Together, they produced pioneering Surrealist work before the movement gained mainstream popularity, with Miller focusing on photography and Ray on painting. Her photographic subjects were diverse, often featuring nude figures. Notable works from this period include Eléctricité and Exploding Hand. During this time, Miller and Ray also developed the photographic technique known as ‘solarisation’, which reverses tones in an image so that dark areas appear light and vice versa. After parting ways with Ray, Miller returned to New York, where she established her own photography studio, specialising in celebrity portraiture, fashion, and advertising. In 1934, she married Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey and moved to Cairo. While living there, she frequently ventured into the desert, finding inspiration in its vastness and sensual beauty. During summer visits to Europe, she met the English artist Roland Penrose, who would later become her second husband.

In 1939, Miller left Bey and moved to England to be with Penrose. It was here that her passion for photography reached new heights, as she turned to wartime photojournalism. She began working as a war correspondent for British Vogue, publishing photo essays on a range of war-related topics and contributing to the magazine's transformation into a serious news outlet. In 1942, eager to be closer to the action, she became an accredited war photographer with the U.S. Army. This role took her to the front lines, including a time when she was accidentally sent into active battle in St. Malo, France. Miller frequently found herself at the heart of critical wartime events. Among her most significant projects were her photographic coverage of U.S. Army nurses in Normandy after D-Day, and her month-long immersion in the battle of St. Malo, where she lived among the soldiers to capture key moments. One of her final and most powerful assignments came with the liberation of the camps. Determined to witness history, she travelled to Buchenwald, where she took unflinching and emotionally raw images. She was reportedly one of the few photographers who could stomach the horrors. She then followed the 179th Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division to Munich and was one of the first journalists to enter newly-liberated Dachau. While in Munich, she also staged one of her most iconic images: a photograph of herself bathing in Hitler’s personal bath, washing off the dust of Dachau.

Miller developed a photographic voice that combined avant-garde experimentation with sharp observational insight. Her early work, influenced by Surrealism, embraced visual distortion, unexpected contrasts, and chance effects, such as solarisation, reflecting a fascination with dreamlike or irrational imagery. In contrast, her war photography adopted a more composed and unflinching style, capturing scenes of conflict, suffering, and aftermath, with a stark honesty that revealed deep psychological and emotional undercurrents, particularly in relation to trauma, violence, and the female gaze. Following the war, Miller’s relationship with photography diminished as she struggled with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Lee Miller died in Chiddingly, England on 21 July 1977. After her death, her son, Anthony Penrose, uncovered a vast archive of her hidden photographs and documents at their home, Farleys House, in Sussex. Since then, her legacy has been rediscovered and celebrated around the world and si her work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including Lee Miller Photographer, which toured the USA, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the UK in the 1990s; Lee Miller’s War, which travelled internationally from 1999 to 2015; and Lee Miller, exhibited across the USA, Austria, Spain, and England between 1986 and 2016. In 2023, Newlands House Gallery in Sussex hosted the exhibition, Lee Miller and Picasso, highlighting time she spent with the great master in England. Miller has become even more popular since the release of the 2024 Hollywood biopic Lee, staring Kate Winslet. In 2025, Tate Britain opened a major retrospective. Her photographs are held in several UK public collections, including the National Galleries of Scotland, National Portrait Gallery, Reiff collection, Tate and the V&A.

Related books

Saskia van Kampen-Prein and Lee Miller, Lee Miller in Print (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, 2023)
Antony Penrose, Lee Miller: Photographs (London: Thames and Hudson, 2023)
Victoria Noel-Johnson and Lee Miller, Lee Miller, Man Ray: Fashion, Love, War (Milan: Skira, 2022)
Ami Bouhassane et al, Lee Miller: Fashion in Wartime Britain (East Sussex: Lee Miller Archives, 2021)
Antony Penrose, The Lives of Lee Miller (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2021)
Ami Bouhassane, Grim Glory: Lee Miller's Britain at War (East Sussex: Lee Miller Archives, 2020)
Antony Penrose, Surrealist: Lee Miller (East Sussex: Lee Miller Archives, 2019)
Ami Bouhassane, Lee Miller (London: Eiderdown Books, 2019)
Eleanor Clayton, Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain (London: Lund Humphries/Hepworth Wakefield, 2018)
Hilary Roberts, Lee Miller: A Woman's War (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015)

Public collections

Related organisations

Vogue (War Correspondent )

Selected exhibitions

Lee Miller (solo exhibition), Tate Britain, London (2025-26)
Lee Miller and Picasso, Newlands House Gallery, Sussex (2023)
Lee Miller in James Joyce's Dublin (solo exhibition), The James Joyce Centre, Dublin, Ireland (2021)
Beloved by Picasso: The Power of the Model (group exhibition), Arken Museum for Moderne Kunst, Skovvej, Denmark (2020)
At War: Women War Photographers (group exhibition), Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland (2020)
Lee Miller in Colour (solo exhibition), Farleys House and Gallery, Lewes, Sussex (2019)
Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain (solo and group exhibition), The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, Yorkshire (2018)
Lee Miller Portraits of Picasso (solo exhibition), The Lightbox, Surrey (2018)
Dreamers Awake (group exhibition), Whitecube, London (2017)
Lee Miller: A Woman's War (solo exhibition), Imperial War Museum, London (2016)
Holbein to Hockney: 500 years of British Art (group exhibition), Fundacion Juan March, Madrid, Spain (2013)
The Lives of Lee Miller (solo exhibition), Staley-Wise Gallery, New York, USA (1986)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Lee Miller ]