AAt first glance, one thinks one is looking at a sleeping woman. Relaxed and yet graceful, the young woman lies on a dark sofa, blond hair falls over her flawless forehead, she appears dainty, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. But then there are her hands. They lie there powerless, but also strangely cramped. While your gaze wanders over the woman’s coat, over the DRK badge on the sleeve and back to her face, understanding makes its way quietly but vehemently into consciousness: This is not the picture of a sleeping woman. It’s that of a dead man. It is the picture of Regina Lisso, daughter of Ernst Kurt Lisso, deputy mayor of Leipzig from 1940. It was taken by Lee Miller on April 20, 1945, two days after the father, mother and daughter committed suicide with cyanide capsules in Leipzig City Hall.
“A phenomenal picture,” says Anne-Marie Beckmann, art historian and director of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation: “Nothing is intrusive, you conquer every single facet when you look at it. It’s a picture you won’t forget.” And one that reflects the very different influences in Miller’s work: the staging of fashion photography, the subtle effect of surrealism and the cruelty of war photography.
Pictures you won’t forget
“It may sound paradoxical, but I could never get enough of this recording,” says Felicity Korn, art historian and curator at the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast. The exhibition “Female Photographers at the Front” was shown there in 2019, curated by Korn and Beckmann. It is currently on display in a smaller form in the Musée de la Liberation de Paris and shows photos that Miller took in England, France and Germany from 1939 onwards. In addition, an exhibition in Monschau is currently presenting pictures by Miller from the last years of the war in the Rhineland.
Born in New York State on April 23, 1907, Miller was a Vogue accredited war photographer. This is surprising, given that the magazine is considered more the home of elaborate fashion spreads than harrowing documentaries about destruction and abysses. Miller himself modeled for US Vogue in the 1920s, graced the cover several times, then switched behind the camera, but initially remained true to fashion photography. She witnessed the beginning of the war in London and convinced the magazine to let her document what was happening in Europe on camera. Her recordings were – and are – harrowing.
Break with photography habits
“The way she captured the cruelty of the war and, in contrast, the seemingly peaceful German everyday life far away from the front broke completely with the usual ways,” says Beckmann. It wasn’t just her focus on unusual details, such as the trouser legs of prisoners in concentration camps, that set Miller apart from her colleagues, Korn adds: “You can see her artistic background, but also her experience, in the selection of the motifs, their staging and composition in commercial photography.”
The surrealists Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington captured by Lee Miller in 1937
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Bild: Lee Miller Archives
With an amateur photographer father who took pictures (not without controversy) of his adolescent daughter, Miller was exposed to photography from an early age. In New York she studied set design and lighting until the journalist Condé Nast, then editor of “Vogue” and “Vanity Fair”, discovered Miller himself: according to legend, in 1926 in Manhattan she almost ran into a car, Nast pulled her just in time back – and offered her a modeling contract. A rapid career followed in front of the cameras of greats such as Edward Steichen and George Hoyningen-Huene.
In Paris she surrounded herself with artists
After just two years, Miller moved on. “For some reason I always want to go somewhere else,” her notes read. In Paris she joined the Surrealists. One thing in particular: Man Ray. Miller worked closely with the photographer, painter and filmmaker; they became a couple and surrounded themselves with artists like Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso. Miller didn’t give up her place in front of the camera entirely: Man Ray pressed the shutter button on many of the photos, and she did the editing herself – and with that, Korn says, she also had control over her own image and its effect.