Self portrait (with headband), Lee Miller Studios, Inc., New York, USA 1932 by Lee Miller (NYS 12-2-C)  © Lee Miller Archives England 2023. All Rights Reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk  

Lee Miller, photographer, surrealist, model, war correspondent, writer, traveller and cook lived her many lives with passion and audacity. These lives are all reflected in her dress and style.

This exhibition examines Lee Miller’s life and work through her clothing beginning in Paris in the late 1920s and ending in Sussex in the mid-1950s. It includes outfits that represent key moments in her biography and her creativity. High fashion from 1930s Europe and New York; jodhpurs, bathing wear and folk dress from travel and adventures in Egypt and Europe with surrealist friends and artists, military uniform and her work as a war correspondent, maternity dress, motherhood, and life in rural Sussex as a surrealist host.

Very few of these intimate items have ever been seen in public. The wardrobe is seen alongside her photography and brings a unique perspective to the stories of her life.

The exhibition coincides with a new film LEE, exploring Miller’s life starring Kate Winslet in the lead.

The show focuses on seven places and times in Lee’s life. Each location represents not only a moment in Miller’s life but a period of creativity distinct from the others: Paris and her emergence as a photographer setting up her own studio, her New York studio photographing American art and fashion. Her work in Egypt photographing landscapes and her move into non-studio portraiture. Her later travels in 1930s Europe celebrating life and unfamiliar cultures. Her fashion photography and the arts under conflict in wartime London, and documenting history and the trauma of World War II on the European frontline. The exhibition concludes with Miller’s life as a gourmand and host at Farleys, Sussex.

For more information please go to the direct link.