Edited by Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Walter Moser. Text by Anna Hanreich, Astrid Mahler, Elissa Mailänder, Walter Moser, Ute Wrocklage.
Lee Miller (1907-77) began her artistic career in 1929 as a Surrealist photographer in Paris. She produced images, often in collaboration with Man Ray, in which she isolated motifs by means of tight framing and experimental techniques, and in doing so rendered visible a paradoxical reality. This publication surveys Miller's best works, including early Surrealist compositions as well as travel photos. At the end of World War II, Miller traveled through Europe as a war reporter, producing harrowing photographs of considerable historical significance. One of her most spectacular pictures originated in late April 1945 in Adolf Hitler's city apartment at Prinzregentenplatz in Munich: Lee had a photo taken of herself sitting naked in the dictator's bathtub--not long after having captured on film the crimes committed in the concentration camps in Dachau and Buchenwald immediately after their liberation by the occupying forces (Miller was one of the first photographers to do so).
"Dead SS Guard, Floating in Canal," Dachau, 1945, is reproduced from Lee Miller, the new release from Hatje Cantz. This haunting image is one of many made by Miller during her years documenting World War II and the Allied liberation—following which she fell into depression and alcoholism. Essayist Ute Wrocklage quotes Miller's fellow photojournalist and wartime companion David E. Scherman, "This was a journalist's finest hour, a story worth crossing Europe for… If she had any emotional reaction at all it was almost orgasmic excitement over the magnitude of the story. She was, in her quiet, methodical, practical way, in seventh heaven… When, as a journalist, do you get the chance to shoot as fast as you can, left and right, and make a horrible, exciting, historic picture? The emotional breakdown, if any was in the subsequent let down after the high of Dachau, and a week later, the burning of the Berghof. The let-down of 'no more hot, fast-breaking story.'" continue to blog
On April 30, 1945, photojournalists David E. Scherman and Lee Miller produced one of the most controversial photographic series of the twentieth century; while documenting Hitler's apartment on the day of his suicide, they photographed each other bathing in the Führer's tub. In Hatje Cantz's new release, Elissa Mailänder writes, "Within Germany, Hitler represented less horror and mass violence than he did rebirth and the ambitious project to Germanize Europe. Miller observed Hitler’s neighbors in Bogenhausen with perplexity: 'The attitude of these Germans was odd. They talked quite normally about... that Hitler was a great man with the right ideas, but he had been badly advised and controlled by gangsters.' Considering the widespread goodwill and profound respect for Hitler, Miller’s and Scherman’s action, as a woman and especially as a Jew, can be interpreted as an act of provocation. It was a (successful) attempt to deconstruct the Führer as a (German) identification figure and hereby to undermine his aura at a time when the war had not officially ended. Although Hitler and his wife had just taken their lives, Germany, which lay in ruins, had not yet capitulated. Embedded in that contemporaneous context, the bathtub photographs sent a clear and defiant message to Germany and international society: The Führer is dead. And now we are here." continue to blog
Model, muse, Surrealist and war photographer—Lee Miller was a complex artist and a daring human being. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907, she moved to Paris in 1929 to study and eventually collaborate closely with Man Ray, who became her lover. She went on to fearlessly document the front rank of the Allied liberation of Europe during World War II; some of her most famous images capture the suicides of high-ranking Nazi officials, beaten SS prison guards, piles of dead bodies at Buchenwald, and of course, her own self-portrait in Hitler's bathtub. Featured image, "Solarized portrait of an Unknown Woman," made in Paris, while under the tutelage of Ray in 1932, is thought by some to capture Surrealist sculptor Meret Oppenheim. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 8.25 x 11.5 in. / 160 pgs / 70 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 ISBN: 9783775739559 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 8/25/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Walter Moser. Text by Anna Hanreich, Astrid Mahler, Elissa Mailänder, Walter Moser, Ute Wrocklage.
Lee Miller (1907-77) began her artistic career in 1929 as a Surrealist photographer in Paris. She produced images, often in collaboration with Man Ray, in which she isolated motifs by means of tight framing and experimental techniques, and in doing so rendered visible a paradoxical reality.
This publication surveys Miller's best works, including early Surrealist compositions as well as travel photos. At the end of World War II, Miller traveled through Europe as a war reporter, producing harrowing photographs of considerable historical significance. One of her most spectacular pictures originated in late April 1945 in Adolf Hitler's city apartment at Prinzregentenplatz in Munich: Lee had a photo taken of herself sitting naked in the dictator's bathtub--not long after having captured on film the crimes committed in the concentration camps in Dachau and Buchenwald immediately after their liberation by the occupying forces (Miller was one of the first photographers to do so).
![Lee Miller: Solarized Portrait of an Unknown Woman [Meret Oppenheim?]](https://s.turbifycdn.com/aah/artbook/lee-miller-solarized-portrait-of-an-unknown-woman-meret-oppenheim-50.jpg)
