Lee Miller

From 10 April to 2 August 2026, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris presents the most significant Lee Miller retrospective held in France in twenty years.

Initiated by Tate Britain and organised in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition brings together nearly 250 vintage and modern prints, several never previously shown, offering a fresh perspective on Lee Miller’s work.

A leading figure in the international avant-garde, Lee Miller (1907, Poughkeepsie, United States – 1977, Chiddingly, United Kingdom) was, at different stages of her life, a model, Surrealist artist, portrait photographer, fashion photographer and war correspondent accredited by the US Army. Long relegated to the role of muse, she is now recognised as one of the great photographers of the twentieth century.

The exhibition traces her entire career, from her beginnings in New York to the war years in Europe, encompassing her time in Egypt and her life in London. It reveals the richness of a body of work that combines formal experimentation, visual boldness and political commitment.

Eighteen years after the last French retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris presents an exhibition in six sections, combining chronological and thematic approaches.

The exhibition

The exhibition opens with a selection of portraits of Lee Miller by leading photographers and filmmakers of the 1920s and 1930s. Miller first made her name in late-1920s New York as a model. One of the most sought-after models in magazines, she embodied the modern, independent, working woman. During her time in Paris, her connections with the Surrealists led her to play one of the principal roles in Jean Cocteau’s first film, The Blood of a Poet (1930–1932).

The exhibition then explores the importance of her time in Paris between 1929 and 1932. During this period, she met Man Ray and became both his apprentice and his partner. Their intense collaboration explored the erotic power of photography, notably through their joint discovery of what Lee Miller called ‘solarisation’. Also known as the Sabattier effect, solarisation involves briefly re-exposing a print or negative to light during processing. This partially reverses the photograph’s tones, creating a dreamlike halo effect. The phenomenon was first observed in the 1840s, but Man Ray and Lee Miller are often regarded as the first artists to use it creatively.

Lee Miller opened her own studio and worked as a photographer for Vogue, asserting her desire for artistic independence. Distinguished by their oblique framing and unexpected juxtapositions, her photographs were exhibited in Parisian galleries alongside those of leading photographers of the day, including Germaine Krull and Brassaï.

This highly productive period ended with her departure for New York in 1932, where she opened a new studio. The Julien Levy Gallery then organised her first solo exhibition. It would be the only one held during her lifetime. Her portrait photography, to which two sections of the exhibition are devoted, flourished and would continue throughout her life. It reflects her many connections with artistic and literary circles.

In 1934, Lee Miller married the Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey and moved with him to Cairo. The photographs from this period are striking for their emphatic use of motifs, textures and framing. Rather than exploring exotic themes, Miller focused on contrasts of material and form, and on the shifts in perception produced by different camera angles.

Miller’s meeting with the Surrealist painter and poet Roland Penrose in 1937 gradually drew her away from Egypt. She spent more time in Europe with her Surrealist friends. When war broke out in 1939, she chose to remain in London and became increasingly involved with British Vogue as a fashion photographer. This section shows how she incorporated London’s ruins and the effects of bombing into her photographs. She also contributed to Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire, published in May 1941, which documented everyday life during the Blitz through a mixture of patriotic celebration and black humour.

In the winter of 1942, Miller became one of the few women photographers to receive US accreditation as a war correspondent. She began reporting directly on the conflict, producing numerous photo essays on women involved in the war effort—nurses, anti-aircraft personnel and women pilots—which appeared in both British and American Vogue.

A few weeks after the D-Day landings in June 1944, she crossed the Channel to follow the Allied advance, finding herself on the front line, notably during the liberation of Saint-Malo. Her photographs and articles condemned the violence of the conflict. The exhibition shows how her distinctive tone and deeply personal engagement set her apart from conventional war reporting. Her eye and sensibility were drawn more to telling details than to the theatre of military operations.

In April 1945, alongside Life photographer David E. Scherman, Lee Miller visited Dachau and Buchenwald just after the camps were liberated. Some of her photographs, published in Vogue with an article (‘Believe It’, June 1945), conveyed her profound shock. Lee Miller’s photographs were among the first to reveal the Nazis’ programme of mass extermination to the wider public.

On 30 April 1945, just after photographing Dachau, Lee Miller travelled to Munich and entered Adolf Hitler’s apartment. In a carefully staged photograph laden with symbolism, she posed in the dictator’s bathtub. Although it received little exposure at the time, the image is now regarded as one of the most iconic photographs of the end of the Second World War. Miller continued photographing Europe and the Liberation until January 1946. These images capture suffering and deprivation, as well as those left behind by the Liberation, including women and children. As Miller confided to her editor: ‘I prefer to describe the damage to destroyed cities and wounded people rather than face the broken spirits and shattered faith of those who thought that “things would go back to the way they were”.’

In the years that followed, Miller struggled to recover from her experience of war. The final section of the exhibition focuses on her move to Farley Farm House in Sussex with Roland Penrose and their son Antony. At first, Lee Miller continued producing reportage and fashion photographs for Vogue, but gradually gave up commercial work. In a more private setting, she continued to photograph those close to her, reflecting her enduring involvement with the international avant-garde. Farley’s House, embodying the spirit of Miller and Penrose, became an important gathering place for artists. On these occasions, Lee Miller indulged in wide-ranging culinary experiments, often paying tribute to her friends’ inventiveness.

The catalogue

The exhibition catalogue published by Tate Britain has been translated and adapted by Paris Musées. Conceived as a new reference work on the artist’s oeuvre, it brings together three essays expanding on the exhibition’s themes. They are written by Damarice Amao, assistant curator 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, chief 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 writer Deborah Levy.


The Lee Miller exhibition is organised by the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris from 10 April to 2 August 2026, in collaboration with Tate Britain and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The exhibition at Tate Britain runs from 2 October 2025 to 15 February 2026, and the exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago will take place from 29 August to 7 December 2026.

With the participation of the Lee Miller Archives.

With the support of Sfil