One of the only female professional photographers accredited as an official US war correspondent during World War II, Lee Miller was photographed sitting in Hitler’s very own bathtub in Munich on the day he committed suicide in Berlin. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, twice married mother of one Miller was raped at the age of eight and investigated by MI5 after being suspected of being a Soviet spy in the 1940s. As a model, this genuine wildcard of a woman appeared on the cover of Vogue in 1927 and of destroying the negatives of much of the terrible things she saw when she visited the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dauchau, she commented: “I don’t want anyone to have to see what I witnessed, but I’m leaving enough to make sure there’s no doubt about what happened”. An exhibition of her works, Lee Miller: A Woman s War, runs at the Imperial War Museum until 24th April 2016, whilst her former home, Farley Farm, is also open to the public for guided tours.
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