Lee Miller: A Life

New York: Alfred A. Knopf; A Borzoi Book, 2005. xv, 426 pages, illustrations; 24 cm. Tight, clean copy. Stated First Edition. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. A fine copy of the first printing. "Carolyn Burke reveals Lee Miller as a multifaceted woman: both model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and mother, and, in later years, gourmet cook - the last of the many dramatic transformations she underwent during her lifetime. A sleek blond bombshell, Miller was part of a glamorous circle in New York and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as a leading Vogue model, close to Edward Steichen, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso. Then, during World War II, she became a war correspondent - one of the first women to do so - shooting harrowing images of a devastated Europe, entering Dachau with the Allied troops, posing in Hitler's bathtub. Burke examines Miller's troubled personal life, from the unsettling photo sessions during which Miller, both as a child and as a young woman, posed nude for her father, to her crucial affair with artist-photographer Man Ray, to her unconventional marriages. And through Miller's body of work, Burke explores the photographer's journey from object to subject; her eye for form, pattern, and light; and the powerful emotion behind each of her images. An illustrated story of art and beauty, sex and power, Modernism and Surrealism, independence and collaboration, Lee Miller: A Life is a study of a fascinating, yet enigmatic, cultural figure. / Carolyn Burke, a biographer, art critic, and translator, has taught at Princeton and the University of California at Santa Cruz and at Davis; at the Universities of Western Sydney and New South Wales in Australia; and at the Sorbonne and the University of Lille in France. She received critical acclaim for her book Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy from The Washington Post ('[a] brilliant biographer'), The New Republic ('superb'), and the San Francisco Chronicle 'impressive . . . does full justice to Loy’s varied accomplishments'). Born in Australia, she now lives in Santa Cruz, California." - Publisher. . 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo. Collectible.