This is a photograph by Lee Miller, taken during the German bombing of London, which began in September 1940 and continued until May 1941

This is a photograph by Lee Miller, taken during the German bombing of London, which began in September 1940 and continued until May 1941. The Luftwaffe attacked the city for 57 nights in succession. The raids destroyed or damaged more than a million buildings and killed about 43,000 civilians.

This is what London looked like after a pinpoint hit: one house in ruins, the next untouched. Moscow, too, has kept such gaps in its urban fabric from the war years; I think many will recall the site of the house destroyed by a bomb on Mokhovaya.

The photograph is by Lee Miller, who was a Vogue model, then became a Surrealist, a pupil of Man Ray and a war correspondent for that same Vogue. When the bombing of London began, she refused to leave for America and started photographing the destruction right around her home in Hampstead. An editor once wrote to her that her pictures were, perhaps, good for the morale of the country, but Miller replied that for her own morale they were hell.

Miller's son later wrote of her work: suddenly, amid the reportage, the dirt and the bullets, one comes upon photographs in which the unreality of war takes on an almost lyrical beauty. The only real training for a war correspondent, he said, is to become a Surrealist first.

After London came Normandy, the liberation of Paris, Buchenwald, Dachau. But when the war ended, Lee Miller almost entirely stopped taking photographs and for the rest of her life did not speak of what she had seen.

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is currently holding a major retrospective of Lee Miller's photographs. About 250 pictures are on show, some of which have not been exhibited before. The exhibition runs until 2 August, which means you still have time to make use of this note.