Unapologetically ambitious and voraciously inventive, this vast new Lee Miller exhibition is the most comprehensive display of the late American photographer’s work ever held in the UK. It’s an overdue account of a remarkable artist whose dazzling, daring career had more than a few twists: from Vogue cover girl to Vogue photographer; from surrealists’ muse to pioneer of the movement; from commercial portraitist to war photographer.
Some of Miller’s fabled work is here, including her famous self-portrait in Hitler’s bathtub, her boots – dirtied with mud from Dachau concentration camp – strewn symbolically on the floor. The exhibition builds a sense of the dizzying, sometimes frenzied energy of Miller, who could photograph fashionable hats as well as Nazis who died by suicide. Yet, as her work turns abruptly in subject matter over the decades, swinging from frivolity to devastation, it is never jarring – and never boring.
