Lee Miller: from fashion to the front line

A new book and exhibition focus on women’s lives in the Second World War through the photography of Lee Miller

Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub, Hitler's apartment, Munich, Germany 1945 (Lee Miller Archives; © Lee Miller Archives; All rights reserved.)

Lee Miller: a Woman’s War is the title of a new book and major photography exhibition, which opens next week at the Imperial War Museum in London. It documents the consequences of the Second World War on women’s lives through the photography of Lee Miller – one of the most important female war photographers of the 20th century. This is the first exhibition to focus on Miller’s vision of gender and includes photographs of her, objects, art and personal items never before seen on display, including her cameras.

The photographs – many of which are previously unpublished – include a female Polish pilot flying a Spitfire in England in 1942. In another picture, which was published in American Vogue, two women model fire masks on the steps of Miller’s own air-raid shelter in Hampstead, London, in 1941.

In a photograph by Miller with David E Scherman, she is seen sitting in Hitler’s bathtub at his apartment in Munich, in 1945. Miller is also photographed wearing a steel helmet, specially designed for using a camera, in Normandy, in 1944, by an unknown photographer.

A bald woman looks downcast in a shot taken by Miller in Rennes, northern France, in the same year – she is being interrogated by the French forces before being paraded through the streets in a public shaming, as a consequence of her relationship with a German soldier.

While in another of Miller’s photographs, two German women are sitting on a park bench surrounded by bombed buildings in Cologne in 1945.

Hilary Roberts, curator of the exhibition, says: “Miller and Scherman were billeted by the Americans to Hitler’s apartment on the day he died. She had also gone to inspect Eva Braun’s apartment nearby. As they hadn’t had a bath for weeks, while accompanying American armed forces through Germany, they took advantage of the facilities here.”

This exhibition also looks at the way Miller evolved as a photographer during the Second World War.

“She started out photographing women’s fashion in 1940 – then progressed to photojournalism. By 1944 she was writing, as well photographing for Vogue,” says Roberts.

'Lee Miller: a Woman’s War' is published by Thames and Hudson, £29.95 hardback. The exhibition is at Imperial War Museum, London (www.iwm.org.uk), from 15 Oct to 24 April