Lee Miller exhibition at Tate Britain is UK's largest on the American photographer
- maxwell museums
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Tate Britain will open the UK’s largest ever exhibition of American photographer Lee Miller this October.
230 vintage and modern photographic prints will be presented in the show, which will celebrate one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed artists. Some works will be on display for the very first time.
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Miller was born in New York State and had an eclectic career during her life — from Vogue model and gourmet chef, to a WWII correspondent. But it’s her outstanding photography work that will be the main focus of this exhibition.
Tate promises that Miller’s “innovative and fearless approach [that] pushed the boundaries of photography” will be highlighted, as will her creation of “some of the most iconic images of the modern era.”
It will trace her journey from modelling in New York, where she was photographed by celebrated figures like Cecil Beaton and Edward Steichen, to working behind the lens in Paris where she moved in 1929.
It was in the French capital where she began working with influential artist Man Ray. She would go on to become his muse and lover.
Together they combined surrealist ideas with technical experimentation in a period of explosive creative exchange. The pair even discovered solarisation, in which reversed halo-like effects are created through exposure to light during photographic processing. Stunning examples will be on display.
Visitors will also be able to see the results of when she turned her lens to the Parisian streets. Through cropping, disorienting angles and reflections, Miller reimagined familiar Parisian sights including the Notre Dame cathedral.
Moving to Cairo in 1934, she continued to use her camera as a tool of exploration. Tate Britain will present her celebrated surrealist image of the Siwa Oasis Portrait of Space 1937, alongside depictions of contemporary Cairo, the Egyptian desert, and her travels across rural Syria and Romania, some of which have never previously been exhibited.
This period was also the point in her career when Miller had many famous friends across the world. The show will present her playful portraits of artists, writers, actors and filmmakers, including Charlie Chaplin and Leonora Carrington.
Miller moved to London in 1939 at the outbreak of war and quickly became a leading fashion photographer for British Vogue. Presented alongside original magazines and archival material, the exhibition will showcase her inventive body of work made in Blitz-torn London. Works such as You will not lunch in Charlotte Street today 1940 and Fire Masks 1941 convey the pathos and absurdity of the city in wartime.
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Miller went on to become one of the few accredited female war correspondents, documenting not only women’s contributions on the home front, but also harrowing scenes from the front line, as well as the devastation and deprivation in post-liberation communities across Europe. These photographs will probe the brutal realities of war and its aftermath.
Yet the most well-known photographs on display will be images of Miller in Adolf Hitler’s private bath in Munich in April 1945, taken with fellow photojournalist David E Scherman after the pair had accompanied Allied forces advancing into Germany.
Remarkably, the portraits were taken hours after they both had been among the first to enter the newly liberated Dachau, uncovering the Nazi atrocities that had taken place there. And on the very same day, across Germany, the Führer killed himself as the Allies closed in. The bathtub image became a visual metaphor for the end of the war.
After 1945, Miller remained deeply engaged with an international circle of artist friends. Her powerful post-war portraits of friends Isamu Noguchi in New York, Dorothea Tanning in Arizona, and Henry Moore in the UK will be on display. Lee Miller died in 1977 aged 70.
Tickets for the exhibition are not yet on sale, but are expected to be released soon.
The show comes hot-on-the-heels of Kate Winslet's portrayal of Miller in the 2023 biopic Lee, which saw Winslet nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama.
The Lee Miller show is one of two big blockbuster art exhibitions at Tate Britain this autumn. The other is a huge exploration of the rivalry between Turner and Constable, two giants of British art which both were born exactly 250 years ago.
Lee Miller will open at Tate Britain in London on 02 October 2025
Meanwhile at Tate Modern, a Tracey Emin retrospective is coming in 2026