The most rebellious female photographer of all time? Lee Miller | Artist in Focus | V&A

From fashion model to photojournalist and World War II correspondent, Lee Miller’s extraordinary career produced some of the most iconic images of the 20th century. Always driven and determined, Miller consistently defied the boundaries of what was expected of women at the time. When a scandal involving an advert for sanitary towels threatened to ruin her modelling career, Miller convinced the American artist Man Ray to take her on as his apprentice, eventually becoming a respected member of the Surrealist circle and starring in Jean Cocteau’s avant garde film ’The Blood of a Poet’. Despite doing commercial photography for Vogue magazine, her work consistently took on a dark, surreal edge, photographing everything from a severed breast on a plate setting – the results of a radical mastectomy – to the eerie scratches made in a window pane in a high-end Parisian perfume store. Her photojournalism for the US Army produced some of the most shocking images of Nazi concentration camps from the Holocaust, which she forced her editor at Vogue to publish, as well as an unbelievable image of herself in Hitler’s bathtub at the end of the war. Watch her granddaughter Ami reveal the stories behind some of Lee Miller’s most incredible photographs, held at both the V&A and at her house in Sussex, now the home of the Lee Miller Archives. 00:00 Who is Lee Miller? 00:54 the ‘Kotex girl’ scandal 01:53 Man Ray and the Eléctricité portfolio 04:04 Modelling in Paris, Surrealism and ‘The Blood of a Poet’ 05:27 Severed Breast: photographing a radical mastectomy 06:24 Exploding Hand: an iconic Surrealist image 07:14 Vogue magazine and the war effort 08:38 Women with Firemasks 09:34 A war correspondent for the US Army 11:04 Photographing atrocities, concentration camps and Hitler’s Bathtub 13:04 Working Guests: her final piece for Vogue Lee Miller’s photography in Vogue magazine is available to view in the National Art Library: See more from our Photography collection: