Les Miller Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose

Lee Miller was an American photographer and fashion model known for her portraits of Pablo Picasso. Despite being known as the lover of Man Ray, Miller’s documentation of war-ravaged Europe after World War II made her reputation as a photographer in her own right. “It seems to me that women have a bigger chance at success in photography than men,” she once said. “Women are quicker and more adaptable than men.” Born Elizabeth Miller on April 23, 1907 in Poughkeepsie, NY, she attended Vassar College and later studied drawing and painting at the Art Students League in New York. Her beauty led her to become a model for Vogue during the late 1920s. Miller later moved to Paris, where she sought out Man Ray to study with him. In the next three years, she learned photographer and became his lover, while falling into a milieu that included Picasso, Max Ernest, and Joan Miro. Returning to New York in 1932, she set up a photography studio and began producing portraits and advertising work. Miller would go on to marry the British Surrealist Roland Penrose, and in 1940, she began working for British Vogue. As a war correspondent, Miller captured some of the first photographic evidence of the Holocaust at the Dachau concentration camp. She died on July 21, 1977 in Chiddingly, United Kingdom. Today, her photographs are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others

credit artnet.com