Product Description

Lee Miller is arguably the 20th century's most famous woman photographer. During her extraordinary life, she came into contact with a wide range of people including many of the most celebrated and influential artists, writers, actors, fashion designers and socialites of the last century. The photographs include not only Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Dora Maar, Igor Stravinsky, Henry Moore, Colette, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire and a host of others, but also pictures of unsung individuals engaged in war work. Most memorable of all are Miller's pictures of victims and perpetrators of Nazi oppression - some of the most powerful images from the last century. These brilliant portraits are shown together for the first time. Throughout the book, Richard Calvocoressi demonstrates the originality and artistry of the photographer's work, while exploring the relationship between the photographs and Lee Miller's fascinating life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1934587 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-14
• Released on: 2002-11-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This collection of over 150 photographs chronicles the model-turned-freelance photographer's distinctive 30-year career, from her beginnings as a portraitist with Man Ray, through her long association with Vogue magazine. Two-thirds of Miller's oeuvre consists of portraits; while most here are of famous artists and writers (René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Ivy Compton-Burnette), the most arresting portraits come from her work as a WWII photoreporter for Vogue (at the time, Vogue was one of the leading publications for war coverage). Miller's frontal-view compositions reveal her frank and unflinching attitude toward the world around her; the disturbing close-ups of female collaborators in Paris and the smashed nose of an SS prison guard in Buchenwald repel even as they compel. Calvocoressi, the director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, introduces the book, suggesting that the "ability to elicit feelings of disgust and sympathy at the same time is arguably what makes Miller and other war photographers... great artists." Her greatest accomplishments, Calvocoressi maintains, are her portraits of Picasso, which were produced over a 20-year period; she catches the artist, Calvocoressi writes, "absorbed in some activity, unselfconscious rather than posing." Gathered for the first time in this collection, Miller's work deserves a studied glance. 157 b&w illus.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Everything about Miller is unusual and, until now, too little known. A classic beauty, her first forays into the world of photography took place in front of the lens after Conde Nast saved her from being run over on a Manhattan street, then promptly hired her as a model for Vogue. In Paris she became muse, lover, and protege to surrealist Man Ray, opening her own studio in Montparnasse in 1930. A woman of innate style with, as Calvocoressi so crisply attests, an "unflinching" eye, Miller graduated rapidly from fashion shoots to celebrity portraiture, drawing from her subjects--Picasso, Stravinsky, Dylan Thomas, Colette, Clark Gable--images of not only sophisticated composition but also arresting emotional resonance. Courageous and intrepid, Miller then transformed herself into a war correspondent, covering the horrors of the London Blitz, Normandy, Buchenwald, and Dachau with awesome presence of mind and transcendent artistry. Most of the riveting photographs published in this singular volume haven't been seen in 50 years, or were never published until now, and all add immeasurably to the human record. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Richard Calvocoressi is Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, where he curated the recent, hugely successful exhibition of Lee Miller's work.