The Female Century, Lee Miller, and a Photograph in Hitler’s Tub

The Twenty-First Century will, I am sure, be known as the Female Century, when women will finally enjoy the same freedoms, power and opportunities as men.

One woman who embodied that spirit in the Twentieth Century, and has anticipated more recent advances in women’s rights, was Lee Miller. Miller was an art student in Manhattan when, aged 21, she was pulled back onto the kerb away from a speeding car by a man who happened to be Condé Nast – the owner of Vogue magazine. This chance meeting helped transform Miller into one of the most successful models in New York.

Lee left Manhattan for Paris in 1929 and met Surrealist painter and photographer Man Ray, who worshipped her. He made a Champagne glass moulded from her breast. He painted a sky-scape of her lips and made surrealist objects of her body, including a metronome with an image of her eye ticking from side to side on top. At first intrigued, Miller soon grew tired of this obsessive fetishizing of her body. 

Miller was the first woman to model sanitary towels in an advertisement for Kotex. She starred in Jean Cocteau’s film, Blood of a Poet. Indeed, blood was an image that was to haunt her for the rest of her life.

She became the first female photojournalist to cover the Second World War for the U.S. army. She recorded the liberation of Paris. And she was the only woman photographer present when U.S. troops entered the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald, sending a telegram to Vogue in May 1945: I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE.  To the credit of Vogue, they published the story and Miller’s horrific photographs of the Holocaust.

The day after the visit to Dachau, on 30 April 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Miller happened to be in Munich and managed to find Hitler’s house. There she posed for photographer Dave Sherman in Hitler’s bathtub (see the photograph above). Notice the photo of Hitler to one side, the little statuette echoing the shape of her body, and the grubby boots on the floor.

The boots on the rug are filthy with the ashes of dead Jews murdered at Dachau by the Nazis, and what Lee Miller is doing here is deliberately dirtying Hitler’s immaculate white bathmat (Hitler was a cleanliness fanatic), with the remains of his victims. It is a powerful political act and a symbolic act of revenge. 

Miller’s intelligence, grace and artistry stand as examples for the independent young women of today. For four years running (in my time at the school), the Head Student – elected by peers - has been a girl. Last year our successful Oxford student was female. And the confidence, as well as maturity, with which the young women in our school conduct themselves is encouraging to see.

Most of today’s students may never have heard of Lee Miller, but her internationalism, her compassion, her creativity and willingness to take risks show to what heights our female students might naturally aspire. I hope they share her high ambition in life, and expect as their natural birthright the equal opportunity to exercise power, lead, create, and inspire others.

Chris Greenhalgh
Principal & CEO