Lee Miller

Lee Miller's life embodied all the contradictions and complications of the twentieth century: a model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and domestic goddess, she was also America's first female war correspondent. Carolyn Burke, a biographer and art critic, here reveals how the muse who inspired Man Ray, Cocteau, and Picasso could be the same person who unflinchingly photographed the horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau. Burke captures all the verve and energy of Miller's life, from her early childhood trauma to her stint as a Vogue model and art-world ingenue, from her harrowing years as a war correspondent to her unconventional marriages and passion for gourmet cooking. A lavishly illustrated story of art and beauty, sex and power, modernism and surrealism, "Lee Miller" illuminates an astonishing woman's journey from art object to artist. This title is National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist.

"Burke indelibly portrays a radiant woman forced to look into the heart of darkness." - Chicago Tribune "Lee Miller was an astounding woman, brought memorably to life in this astounding book." - Telegraph (UK) "At last, a life and an album about Lee Miller.... For the first time the ravaged arc of [her] life is clear, beautiful but lined in pain." - New York Observer "Illuminating, revelatory, perceptive.... A welcome and long overdue biography sure to become essential reading for any student of the history of art and photography in the twentieth century." - Scotsman (UK) "Burke captures the excitement of Miller's omnivorous spirit." - Janet Maslin, New York Times "Delightful, meticulously researched, fascinating.... Miller's life had many phases, all of them interesting, and Burke captures them in [this] fine biography." - Washington Post Book World"

Carolyn Burke has taught at Princeton University and the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as at other universities in France, the United States, and Australia. She is the author of Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy.