In 1929 Miller was working in Paris as a Vogue model and experimenting with photography on the side. As she grew more serious about her artistic endeavors, she sought out a fellow expatriate American, the photographer Man Ray, and soon became his model, apprentice, and lover.

Miller and Man Ray often walked the Parisian streets on photographic excursions, and this picture is a rare early image from this period in Miller’s practice. The photograph’s play of light and shadow suggests a dreamlike, otherworldly space, betraying the influence of Man Ray and other Surrealists, but its delicacy and elegance reflect Miller’s own emerging vision.

Following the end of her relationship with Man Ray, Miller went on to run her own studio in New York. By the time she made it back to Europe, shortly before World War II, her photographic interests ran more toward photojournalism.

As a Vogue correspondent she documented many significant events during the war, including the London blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the Americans’ entry into the concentration camps in Dachau and Buchenwald. In 1945, after Allied troops had taken over Adolf Hitler’s Berlin residence, she made an infamous self-portrait, bathing in the Führer’s tub.