| From the distance of history, the photographer Lee Miller looks like one of those figures who floats effortlessly through a charmed, distinguished life. Strikingly beautiful and charismatic, she got through art school partly by working as a lingerie model. When she débuted in Vogue, in March, 1927, it was on the cover. Miller quickly became a muse for the top photographers of her era, and even took one as a lover: Man Ray, who also taught her the technical skills to start a career of her own behind the lens. Miller’s subjects included Pablo Picasso and Charlie Chaplin, but she didn’t need to work too hard. In a 2008 appraisal, The New Yorker’s Judith Thurman notes that Miller, a frequent poker player and partier, “never scheduled more than one sitting a day.” But, as a model and photographer might know better than anyone, appearances can be deceiving. As a small child, Miller was sexually assaulted by a family friend, an ordeal that permanently altered her body and psyche. The trauma forms the backdrop of “Lee,” a new bio-pic starring Kate Winslet, which focusses on Miller’s professional activities in wartime Europe, where she photographed the liberation of Paris and of the concentration camps. The most famous image associated with Miller—a shot of her in Hitler’s bathtub—was taken by a different photographer, however, and has, Thurman argues, unfairly eclipsed her own career. Then again, the mercurial artist didn’t seem to have been particularly invested in her legacy. “Her son had no idea, until his wife found Miller’s archives” in an attic, Thurman writes, “of the lives she had lived or of the work that she had accomplished.” | 
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