CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/26/2015

Lee Miller

"Dead SS Guard, Floating in Canal," Dachau, 1945, is reproduced from Lee Miller, the new release from Hatje Cantz. This haunting image is one of many made by Miller during her years documenting World War II and the Allied liberation—following which she fell into depression and alcoholism. Essayist Ute Wrocklage quotes Miller's fellow photojournalist and wartime companion David E. Scherman, "This was a journalist's finest hour, a story worth crossing Europe for… If she had any emotional reaction at all it was almost orgasmic excitement over the magnitude of the story. She was, in her quiet, methodical, practical way, in seventh heaven… When, as a journalist, do you get the chance to shoot as fast as you can, left and right, and make a horrible, exciting, historic picture? The emotional breakdown, if any was in the subsequent let down after the high of Dachau, and a week later, the burning of the Berghof. The let-down of 'no more hot, fast-breaking story.'"