Surrealist Lee Miller
This major survey of American surrealist photographer Lee Miller was curated by her son, Anthony Penrose, for the Heide Museum of Modern Art. One hundred photographs from her expansive oeuvre demonstrate a remarkable originality and consistent commitment to peace, freedom, justice and truth through many intense experiences. The characteristics of Miller’s photography – dislocation, incongruity, the sometimes-disquieting beauty everywhere, the uncanny and juxtaposition of the marvelous and the everyday – imbued her fashion shoots, landscape photographs and even her work as an official war correspondent for British Vogue during The Blitz of London and the liberation of France and the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. A pioneer in her surrealist circle, discovering solarisation while working with Man Ray in his darkroom, Miller’s legacy was largely undiscovered until Penrose recently discovered his mother’s vast archive in the attic after her death. The Australian release of the film LEE, starring Kate Winslet, and the release of Penrose’s new book, with a foreword by the actress, coincide with the run of the exhibition, which continues at Heide until February 25, 2024.
