Lee Miller

In the late 1920s, Lee Miller, already a legendary fashion model, left the United States to study photography in Paris. Here she became the disciple and lover of Man Ray, and rapidly developed into a witty surrealist photographer. She was soon taking on both portrait and fashion assignments for Vogue and running her own studio, first in Paris and later in New York. The Second World War saw her as Vogue's war correspondent: she covered not only the siege of St Malo and the liberation of Paris, but was also present with her camera when the US Army entered Dachau concentration camp. Her later years were spent in London with her husband, the painter, writer and collector, Roland Penrose, and at their Sussex home, Farley Farm.
During her extraordinary life, Lee Miller came into contact with an astonishing range of people including painters, sculptors, actors, writers, musicians, fashion designers and socialites. Many of these became her friends and also the subject of her penetrating portraits. The finest of these photographs, two-thirds of which are either unpublished or have not been seen in print for over fifty years, are collected together here for the first time. They include not only highly perceptive and sympathetic studies of Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Dora Maar, Igor Stravinsky, Henry Moore, Colette, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire and others, but also pictures of unsung individuals engaged in war work. Most memorable of all are Miller's pictures of victims and perpetrators of Nazi oppression - some of the most powerful images from the last century.

Richard Calvocoressi has been Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh since 1987, and was formerly a curator at the Tate Gallery.