Further Reading
‘‘A Discussion Between Boris Mikhailov and Jan Kaila.’’ In
Boris Mikhailov: The Hasselblad Award 2000by Gunilla
Knape and Boris Groys. Go ̈teborg: Hasselblad Center
and New York: Scalo, 2001, 87.
Hiller, Andrew. ‘‘Boris Mikhailov’s Case History.’’Aper-
ture164 (Spring 2001).
Mikhailov, Boris.Case History. Zurich, Berlin, New York:
Scalo, 1999.
Mikhailov, Boris.Look At Me I Look At Water, or, Perver-
sion of Repose.Go ̈ttingen: Steidl, 2004.
Mikhailov, Boris.Salt Lake.Go ̈ttingen: Steidl, 2002.
Stahel, Urs, ed.Boris Mikhailov: A Retrospective. Fotomu-
seum Winterther and Zurich: Scalo, 2003.
Tupitsyn, Margarita.Mikhailov, Boris: Unfinished Disserta-
tion, or, Discussions With Oneself. Zurich, Berlin, New
York: Scalo, 1998.
Tupitsyn, Margarita and Victor.Verbal Photography: Ilya
Kabakov, Boris Mikhailov and the Moscow Archive of
New Art. Porto: Museu Serralves, 2004.
Williams, Gilda.55: Boris Mikhailov. London: Phaidon,
2001.LEE MILLER
American
Lee Miller was a noted Surrealist, studio and fash-
ion photographer, and war correspondent whose
work forVoguemagazine during World War II is
often considered to be her most important contri-
bution to the history of photography. Although she
changed careers a number of times, Miller’s endur-
ing legacy can be found in her images, as photo-
graphy became the one passion that sustained her
for much of her adult life.
Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907, Eliza-
beth (known as Lee) Miller was raised in a house-
hold where photography was a prevalent influence.
Miller’s father Theodore was both a successful busi-
nessman and avid amateur photographer. Charac-
terized as a privileged yet rebellious adolescent,
Miller was expelled from numerous private schools
before being sent to Paris with a governess in 1925.
Beginning her formal artistic education while in
France, she studied at L’E ́cole Medgyes pour la
Technique du The ́aˆtre, and upon her return to the
United States in 1926, Miller enrolled in the Art
Students League of New York. A beautiful and
highly photogenic young woman, Miller’s studies
were sidetracked by her brief but highly successful
career as a model forVoguemagazine, where the
leading fashion photographers of the day, including
Horst P. Horst, Edward Steichen, Arnold Genthe,
and George Hoyningen-Huene, photographed her.
In 1929, Miller returned to Paris and inserted
herself into the atelier of Surrealist Man Ray.
Although familiar with photography since her
childhood, it was in Man Ray’s studio that Miller
learned about photographic technique. While
Miller modeled for Ray, she also produced her
own photographs and assisted Ray in his dark-
room. It was here that Miller claimed to have con-
tributed to the rediscovery of the Sabattier effect, a
nineteenth-century process that had been all but
forgotten. Also called solarization, it is a darkroom
technique in which film is purposely exposed to
light during the development process, encouraging
a partial reversal of printed black-and-white tones.
Man Ray is typically credited with the revival of the
technique, but Miller recalled the moment of dis-
covery in Ray’s darkroom differently. She claimed
that it was her accidental action of exposing unfixed
film to light that encouraged the development of a
technique that later became a signature of both
Miller’s and Man Ray’s work.
In Paris, Miller also starred (as an armless sta-
tue) in Jean Cocteau’s avant-garde film,Le Sang
d’un poete(Blood of the Poet), and she had her first
exhibition of her photographs. She also ended her
affair with Man Ray after meeting Egyptian busi-
nessman Aziz Eloui Bey, whom she married in 1934
following the suicide of Bey’s wife.
Miller left France in October of 1932, but not
before building an independent and successful
photography studio in Paris. She repeated this suc-
cess upon her return to New York City, opening a
studio at 8 East 48th Street with her younger brother
Erik. Miller’s work was well received almost imme-
diately in the United States, and she was featured in
a one-woman show at the Julien Levy Gallery in
December of 1932, just two months after returning
to her home country. She photographed a number ofMILLER, LEE