Kate Winslet plays war photographer Lee Miller in the new biopic released in theaters on October 9, 2024.
American photographer and reporter Lee Miller is entitled to her own biopic. Released on October 9, 2024, the feature film which soberly bears its name is directed by Ellen Kuras, an American filmmaker who chose Kate Winslet to play the lead role. Lee Miller traces the life of the woman who was born on April 23, 1907, within a Protestant family with progressive opinions, which forged the character of this war correspondent during the Second World War.
But who was the real Lee Miller? Her childhood, raised on an equal footing with her brothers, was however punctuated by drama before she was recognized as a major figure in photojournalism: victim of rape at the age of seven and then suffering from a sexually transmitted disease by Subsequently, she also lost her boyfriend as a teenager to death from drowning. Once an adult, she studied at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris before leaving for New York at the end of the 1920s. She was then spotted there by the founder of Vogue magazine, who offered her work. modeling work.
His beginnings as a photographer
His meeting with the painter and photographer Man Ray in Paris will also be decisive. In 1930, she took over orders for fashion photographs from Man Ray, even if some of her photos remained unfairly signed by her companion. However, she trained in photography through this experience and then participated in Parisian surrealism, rubbing shoulders with the greatest artists of this movement. At the end of the 1930s, it would even be a model for Pablo Picassowhich she photographs in return. But her very violent breakup with Man Ray made her leave for New York in 1932, and she then opened her own photography studio, before marrying the Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey, before leaving him a few years later .
War correspondent, she photographs the horror of the camps
During the Second World War, Lee Miller found herself accredited by the US Army and took photos of the Blitz, before becoming a war correspondent in the US army in the summer of 1944. She then commented on the daily life of American soldiers before discover the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. She will be one of the first to photograph the horror of the camps, which will be published in Vogue.
After World War II, Lee Miller descended into alcoholism and depression due to post-traumatic stress. She married Roland Penrose in 1947, with whom she had a son. She then only photographed occasionally, illustrating in particular the works of Penrose or Picasso. She died of cancer on July 21, 1977 at age 70.
Synopsis – Former model for Vogue and muse of Man Ray, Lee Miller became one of the first female war photographers. Having gone to the front and ready to do anything to bear witness to the horrors of the Second War, she, through her courage and her refusal of conventions, changed the way of seeing the world…