Royal Air Force News Friday, November 14, 2025 P17
WWII trailblazer
by Tracey Allen
Features
The Miller’s tale Exhibition reveals hidden side of war photojournalist’s remarkable career L
EE MILLER was a trailblazer – a pioneering war correspondent and photographer and a former model who evolved from being a leading fashion photographer to documenting harrowing scenes from the frontline. But Miller hid her enormous archive of negatives, prints and notebooks in her attic in the 1950s, didn’t tell her son Antony about her former life, and reinvented herself as a gourmet cook, said her granddaughter Ami Bouhassane, who is director of Miller’s archive at Farleys House and Gallery, the Sussex home of Miller and her husband, the surrealist artist Roland Penrose. At Cheltenham Literature Festival last month, Bouhassane discussed her celebrated grandmother’s life and work with Hilary Floe, curator of the landmark Tate Britain exhibition Lee Miller that runs until February 15, 2026. ARCHIVE DIRECTOR: Lee
Miller’s proud granddaughter Ami Bouhassane at Farleys House and Gallery
EXHIBITION BOOK: Lee Miller, edited by Hilary Floe and Saskia Flower (Tate Publishing)
Bouhassane revealed: “Mum and dad found the stuff in the attic just after Lee died.” Born in New York in 1907, she died in 1977, aged 70. Ami said: “Lee had an elder and a
FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH: Lee Miller, David E. Scherman Dressed for War, London 1942. Lee Miller Archives
younger brother but her parents treated them equally, and because she had this basis as being equal to her brothers she had this core belief in herself.” As a model she appeared on the cover of American Vogue, but said, “I would rather take a picture than be one,” and by 1930 was trying to launch herself as a fashion photographer. She introduced herself to the surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray and was his assistant in Paris for nine months, but, stressed Ami, “was not just his sidekick, as the exhibition at Tate Britain shows.” Ami added: “Within less than a year of practising as a professional photographer her work was being published in Vogue.” “Miller and Man Ray fell in love and an apprenticeship very rapidly became a collaboration, a real exchange of creative ideas,” Floe explained. “It was a very exciting time.” Ami said: “Paris was her base
and her really formative years. This is who she was and who she wanted to be.”
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Lee was left traumatised by the things she witnessed during the war, and its aftermath. What she saw in the camps deeply affected her
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Floe added: “Wherever Lee went she seemed to attract a crowd of artists and intellectuals, she was so clever and charismatic, and an extrovert. She fell in with surrealists in Paris and formed friendships that stayed with her for the rest of her life.” Miller lived in Egypt from 1934 to 1939 and when war broke out moved to London and became a
leading fashion photographer for British Vogue. She went on to work as one of the few accredited female war correspondents and, as well as recording women’s contributions on the home front, photographed the devastation and deprivation in post-liberation communities across France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Hungary and Romania. She later became known as ‘the girl in Hitler’s bath tub’, and the Tate Britain exhibition includes the famous portraits of Miller and of her colleague David E Scherman in Hitler’s private bath in April 1945. Ami said: “Lee was left traumatised by the things she witnessed during the war, and its aftermath. What she saw in the camps deeply affected her. Some of her friends later in life had no idea about all that work she had done as a photographer.” ●Go to: farleyshouseandgallery. co.uk and tate.org.uk for more information.