Lee Miller (1) (1907–1977)

From The New York Times: In the 1920s, Elizabeth "Lee" Miller's cool, sexually liberated flapper visage was everywhere. On the cover of Vogue and in other publications, her blond bob gleamed like the golden helmet of a gin-alley goddess. It was while modeling for Edward Steichen that Miller began to learn the basics of photography, and found herself inspired to move behind the camera. In the 1930s, she plunged into the Montparnasse art scene, appearing in Jean Cocteau's film "The Blood of a Poet," sitting for Pablo Picasso's portraits of Provençal wenches, and, most fortunately, after presenting herself to Man Ray as his protégée, becoming his lover, muse and eventual collaborator.

She became a Surrealist photographer herself who worked with and was friends with a wide number of major artists of her time including Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Jean Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, and Paul Éluard, besides Picasso and Cocteau. Lee Miller was one of the most extraordinary photographers of the 20th century, famous for her portraits and devastating photographs of World War II, as well as for her legendary beauty. As an intrepid photojournalist, she was among the first to document the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. An art student and a "Vogue" model, she was a close friend of artists such as Picasso, Cocteau, Max Ernst and Paul Eluard, and became a muse of Man Ray and the Parisian surrealists. She married the English historian and modern art collector Sir Roland Penrose in 1947 and they bought Farley Farm in East Sussex, where some of her works are still exhibited.