Lee Miller

From 10 April to 2 August 2026, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is presenting a retrospective devoted to Lee Miller in France, twenty years after the last one.

Organised at the initiative of Tate Britain and in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition brings together nearly 250 vintage and modern prints, several of them previously unseen, and offers a fresh perspective on Lee Miller’s work.

A key figure of the international avant-garde, Lee Miller (1907, Poughkeepsie, United States – 1977, Chiddingly, United Kingdom) was successively a model, Surrealist artist, portraitist, fashion photographer and a war correspondent accredited by the U.S. military. Long relegated to the role of a muse, she is now recognised as a major photographer of the twentieth century.

The exhibition traces her entire career, from her beginnings in New York to the war years in Europe, including her stay in Egypt and her life in London. It demonstrates the richness of a body of work in which formal experimentation, visual audacity and political engagement coexist.

Eighteen years after the last French retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris proposes a route in six sections, mixing chronological and thematic approaches.

The exhibition

It opens with a group of portraits of Lee Miller taken by photographers and filmmakers of the 1920s and 1930s. Lee Miller established herself as a personality in late‑1920s New York first through her work as a model. She was among the sought‑after models for magazines, embodying the archetype of the modern, emancipated, active woman. During her stay in Paris, her ties with the Surrealists led her to play one of the principal roles in Jean Cocteau’s first film, Le Sang d’un poète (The Blood of a Poet, 1930–1932).

The route continues by examining the importance of her Parisian period between 1929 and 1932. This phase is marked by her encounter with Man Ray, of whom she became both apprentice and companion. Their collaboration explored the erotic power of the photographic medium and is notably manifested in their joint discovery of what Lee Miller called “solarization.” Also known as the Sabatier effect, solarization is a technique that consists of briefly re‑exposing a print or negative to light during processing. The result is a partial inversion of the photograph’s tones, producing a dreamlike halo. Although observed as early as the 1840s, Man Ray and Lee Miller are often considered the first artists to use it creatively.

Lee Miller opened her own studio and worked as a photographer for Vogue, thereby asserting her desire for artistic independence. Her photographs, distinctive for their taste for diagonal framing and unexpected juxtapositions, were shown in Parisian galleries alongside other contemporary photographers (Germaine Krull, Brassaï).

This period ends with her return to New York in 1932, where she opened a new studio. Her first solo exhibition was organised by the Julien Levy Gallery. There would be no others during her lifetime. Her portrait practice, to which two sections of the exhibition are devoted, gained momentum and continued throughout her life, reflecting her many ties to artistic and literary circles.

In 1934, Lee Miller married Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey and settled with him in Cairo. The photographs from this period are striking for their emphasis on motifs, textures and framing. Far from an exploration of exotic themes, Miller turned her attention to contrasts of materials and forms and to the shifts in perception produced by changes in viewpoint.

In 1937, Miller’s meeting with the Surrealist painter and poet Roland Penrose gradually drew her away from Egypt. She began to spend more time in Europe among her Surrealist friends. In 1939, at the outbreak of war, she chose to remain in London and increasingly contributed to British Vogue as a fashion photographer. This section shows how she used the ruined and bombed streets of London in her images. She also took part in the May 1941 publication Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire, a work that testifies to daily life during the Blitz by mixing patriotic celebration with black humour.

In the winter of 1942, Miller was one of the few women photographers to receive accreditation as a war correspondent from the United States. She now covered the conflict directly and produced numerous reports on women engaged in the war—nurses, members of anti‑aircraft defence units, women aviators—published in both British and American Vogue.

A few weeks after the June 1944 landings, she crossed the English Channel to follow the advance of Allied troops and was at the front lines, notably during the liberation of Saint‑Malo. Her photographs and articles denounced the violence of the conflict. The exhibition shows how she then distinguished herself from conventional war reporting by the tone she adopted and her very personal engagement. Her eye and sensibility focused more on significant details than on the spectacle of military operations.

In April 1945, alongside Life photographer David E. Scherman, Lee Miller went to Dachau and Buchenwald just after the liberation of the camps. Accompanied by an article ("Believe it" – June 1945), some of her images published in Vogue convey her shock. Lee Miller’s photographs were among the first to reveal to the general public the Nazis’ programme of mass extermination.

On 30 April 1945, shortly after photographing the Dachau camp, Lee Miller went to Munich and entered Adolf Hitler’s apartment. In a thoroughly staged, symbol‑laden photograph, she posed in the dictator’s bathtub. Little circulated at the time, the image is now considered emblematic of the end of the world war. Until January 1946, Lee Miller photographed Europe and the Liberation. These images reflect the pain and deprivation but also those left behind by the Liberation, such as women and children. Miller confided to her editor: "I prefer to describe the damage of destroyed cities and injured people rather than face the shattered morale and the annihilated faith of those who thought ‘things would go back to the way they were.'"

In the years that followed, Miller struggled to recover from her war experience. The final section of the exhibition is devoted to her settlement at Farley Farm House (Sussex) with Roland Penrose and their son Antony. Lee Miller initially continued her reports and fashion photography for Vogue but gradually withdrew from commercial work. In a more private setting she continued to make portraits of those close to her, reflecting her ongoing engagement with the international avant‑garde. Farley Farm House, reflecting the Miller‑Penrose partnership, became a locus for artistic gatherings during which Lee Miller indulged in numerous culinary experiments that often paid homage to the inventiveness of her friends.

The catalogue

The exhibition catalogue published by Tate Britain on the occasion of the show has been adopted, translated and adapted by Paris Musées. Conceived as a new reference work on the artist’s oeuvre, it brings together three essays that extend the themes addressed in the exhibition, written by Damarice Amao, curatorial assistant in the photography department of the Musée national d’Art Moderne; Hilary Floe, senior curator at Tate Britain and curator of the Lee Miller exhibition; and Fanny Schulmann, senior curator at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and co‑curator of the Lee Miller exhibition. It also includes a text by the British author Deborah Levy.