Lee Miller

From April 10 to August 2, 2026, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris presents “Lee Miller,” the most important French retrospective devoted to the photographer in twenty years. Organized in partnership with Tate Britain and the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition brings together nearly 250 vintage and modern prints, including several previously unseen. The itinerary, designed in six parts, traces the stages of a multifaceted career: from the very first portraits and years of modeling in New York, to Parisian and Egyptian experiments; from fashion work in London during the Blitz to liberation reportage; up to a withdrawn life at Farley Farm House. Through these sections, the exhibition shows how Lee Miller combined a plastic rigor inherited from the avant-garde with documentary commitment in the face of urgent history.

We first discover the 1920s and 1930s, when Lee Miller established herself as one of New York's top models, embodying the modern, emancipated woman. These first portrait images, signed by the era's leading photographers, make tangible how she internalized fashion codes to better subvert them. Her Parisian stay, documented between 1929 and 1932, led to decisive experiments. In Paris then Egypt, Miller grew closer to Surrealist avant-garde and worked notably with Man Ray, exploring processes like solarization. Among the notable pieces highlighted in the exhibition is Portrait of Space, emblematic of her Egyptian period and a formal inventiveness that runs through all her work.

Meeting Roland Penrose in 1937 and the outbreak of war in 1939 shifted Miller’s path toward London. She committed as a photographer for British Vogue, where her viewpoint proved singular: elegance of silhouettes coexisting with the scars of the Blitz. The series published in Vogue reveal how Miller integrated ruins and the conflict's atmosphere into a fashion aesthetic, creating images where beauty and historical urgency respond to each other. This chapter highlights her ability to navigate between editorial commissions and personal involvement without sacrificing formal precision.

In April 1945, alongside Life photographer David E. Scherman, Lee Miller went to Dachau and Buchenwald shortly after the camps' liberation. Photographs from these visits, published in the article “Believe it” in June 1945 Vogue, were among the first images to reveal to the public the scale of Nazi crimes. The itinerary conveys the gravity of these images while placing this testimony in continuity with a body of work where formal rigor meets documentary imperative. The final section then addresses Miller’s later life, notably her establishment at Farley Farm House in Sussex, a refuge and artistic space where she pursued a more intimate practice.