Lee Miller
[Photographer and model, b. 1907, Poughkeepsie, New York, d. 1976, Sussex, England.]
I took some pictures of the place [Hitler’s residence] and I also got a good night’s sleep in Hitler’s bed. I even washed the dirt of Dachau in his tub.
[Being a great photojournalist is] a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you.
It seems to me that women have a bigger chance at success in photography than men… Women are quicker and more adaptable than men. And I think they have an intuition that helps them understand personalities more quickly than men.
The personality of the photographer, his approach, is really more important than his technical genius.
I would rather take a photograph than be one.
Nearly all the photographs I ever took have disappeared—lost in New York!—thrown away by the Germans—in Paris—bombed and burned in the London blitz—and now I find Condé Nast has just casually scrapped everything I did for them, including war pictures.
(1976)
There were lots of things, touching, poignant or queer I wanted to photograph...
I’m no good with my hands, though I am good with a screwdriver—taking a camera apart. But sewing on a button? I could scream.
