Goodbye Richard Miller

Richard Crump Miller was born on Aug 6, 1912 in Hanford, CA, to Ray Oakley Miller and Laura Belle Crump Miller. As a child, Miller’s interest in photography grew from toying with his father’s 3¼x4¼ folding roll-film camera. In 1929 Miller was introduced to Leica and Graflex cameras and began to study cinematography while attending, successively, Stanford University and Pomona College. Miller ended up graduating from USC where he met his wife, Margaret. In 1935 Miller pursued acting at a community theater where he also shot photographs of fellow players with a borrowed Leica before upgrading to an acquired Zeiss Contax I 35mm camera. When Miller traveled to New York looking for work as an actor he showed his photographs to Edward Steichen who praised and encouraged him to stay in New York and work in photography. However, in 1937, Miller stopped temporarily in order to return to Los Angeles and marry Margaret.

In 1939 Miller officially left acting for a career as a photographer. He learned the tri-color carbro printing process out of a book and purchased a one-shot color camera that enabled him to capture live subjects. He then converted a bathroom in his parent’s home into a makeshift darkroom to process advertising and commercial photography—which made him the only one in his field both working in carbro and processing his own prints.