A Chicago woman and her squatter’s shack on a cold winter day in 1948. The shack was said to have been made of cardboard and Plywood [Picture credit: Wayne Miller/Magnum Photos]

Magnum Photos president Alex Majoli said Miller’s legendary images of
Chicago ‘paved the ground for the rest of us who tried to depict the
streets, the real life. He was a pioneer’.

The Chicago-born photographer worked as a member of Edward Steichen’s US Navy Combat Photo Unit during the Second World War, and later as associate curator of Steichen’s exhibition ‘The Family of Man’.

‘But, arguably, his career defining work was made in Chicago’s South Side, where he covered the social, cultural and economic manifestations of the greatest internal migration in American history that saw thousands of black American families arriving in Chicago on a weekly basis,’ adds Magnum in a statement posted on its website.

Miller, who would often turn his lens on his own family, was once asked about his artistic ambition.

He replied: ‘To photograph mankind and explain man to man.’

Magnum adds: ‘He certainly did both, and did so at the absolute highest level.’

Wayne Miller joined Magnum in 1958.

He is survived by his wife Joan, four children, nine grandchildren and a great grandchild.

Wayne Miller

[Picture credit: Wayne Miller/Magnum Photos, courtesy Joan B Miller]