Lee Miller in Fashion

Lee Miller in Fashion, by the historian Becky E. Conekin, traces Lee Miller's path through the fashion industry that shaped and was shaped by her: model, muse, and eventually photographer in her own right.

Miller began as a Condé Nast model in 1920s New York. She then moved to Paris, entered Man Ray's circle, and became a central figure of Surrealism both in front of the camera and behind it. Conekin follows her into her own fashion photography for Vogue, and through the years when that same eye turned to war reportage. The 224-page book draws on archival fashion photographs, contact sheets, studio memos, and Miller's own published illustrations, many reproduced here for the first time. It traces a career usually remembered for its war photography back to its roots in fashion and Surrealist image-making.

Lee Miller (1907–1977) worked across modeling, Surrealist photography, fashion photography, and war correspondence for British Vogue. She covered the liberation of Paris, the concentration camp at Dachau, and Hitler's abandoned Munich apartment. Conekin is a cultural historian who has also written on postwar British fashion and consumption. This book followed her 2006 essay collection on Miller and drew on the Lee Miller Archives, run by Miller's son Antony Penrose.