Lee Miller in Print
21.02.2025
06.08.2025
Model, war correspondent, photographer, surrealist: Lee Miller (1907-1977) wore many hats. As one of the few widely known female photographers of the first half of the 20th century she has made a valuable contribution to photography.
In the 1930s, Lee Miller is part of the surrealist circles of Paris. At her studio she creates commercial photos for fashion magazines, sometimes also working in front of the camera. As a former model she understands posing like no one else.
During and after the Second World War, she documents important moments as a photographer and war correspondent. This is quite a remarkable feat for a woman: such work was typically the exclusive domain of male photographers.
Lee Miller’s diverse, layered, and often personal corpus of work appears in well-known magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and LIFE Magazine, as well as in avant-gardist artists’ magazines. Her photographs also appear in publications by the allied forces, such as The War Illustrated and Cadran. Her own publication Wrens in Camera is focused on the wartime labour carried out by women for the British Royal Navy.
Lee Miller in Print offers a new perspective on Miller’s work and life through her photographs and articles that were published in magazines and other print media. The exhibition also highlights 20th-century developments in the photographic medium, and the use of photographic imagery as propaganda.
The Lee Miller in Print exhibition was originally developed by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. A generous loan from the Lee Miller Archives, which manage the artist’s estate, enabled its realisation at FOMU. The exhibition resulted from years of research by curator Saskia van Kampen-Prein at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
A same-titled publication in Dutch and English accompanies the exhibition. For sale at the FOMU shop and online (€ 34,95).
Curators: Saskia van Kampen-Prein and Anne Ruygt