Prof. Francesco Carelli

Tates


From Tate’s exhibition with press permission

 

Tate Britain in London presents the largest retrospective of photographer Lee Miller ever staged. Spanning the full breadth of Miller’s multifaceted practice, from her participation in French surrealism to her war reportage, the exhibition reveals how her innovative and fearless approach pushed the boundaries of photography, producing some of the most iconic images of the modern era. Around 230 vintage and modern prints, including works on display for the first time, are presented alongside unseen archival material and ephemera, shining a light on the richness of her photographic legacy.

Miller was born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York State. She initially studied painting and stage design, but her time as a professional model inspired her to pursue photography. Tate Britain’s exhibition traces her journey from modelling in New York, where she was photographed by celebrated figures like Cecil Beaton and Edward Steichen, to working behind the lens in Paris where she moved in 1929. There she began working with Man Ray, combining surrealist ideas with technical experimentation in a period of explosive creative exchange. Together they discovered solarisation, in which reversed halo-like effects are created through exposure to light during processing, exemplified by the newly discovered Sirène (Nimet Eloui Bey) c.1930-32. Alongside her work with Man Ray, Miller also apprenticed at French Vogue, established her own commercial photographic studio and starred in Jean Cocteau’s groundbreaking surrealist film Le Sang d’un poète 1930, extracts of which are shown in the exhibition.

By the early 1930s, Miller was fully enmeshed within Paris’s avant-garde circles. Turning her lens to the city’s streets, she created a series of photographs capturing the surreal in the everyday: an early example shows a web of semi-congealed tar oozing across the pavement towards a pair of anonymous feet. Through crops, disorienting angles and reflections, Miller reimagined familiar Parisian sights ranging from Notre Dame cathedral to a Guerlain shop window. Returning to New York in 1932, she set up Lee Miller Studios Inc. and opened her first solo exhibition.