Lee Miller: Photographer
25 February - 26 April 1998
Following a highly successful tour of the United States and Europe,
this exhibition has been made available for a New Zealand tour by
the Lee Miller Archive in Sussex.
This will be the first time an extensive survey of Miller's photographs has visited New
Zealand and it introduces us to a remarkably talented and dedicated photographer whose
work behind the camera has sometimes been eclipsed by the highly melodramatic nature of
her life.
Lee Miller was a breathtaking beauty whose face graced the cover of 'Vogue', an
impulsive traveller, risk-taker and a legendary heart breaker. Her friends, lovers and
photographic subjects were among the most brilliant artists, writers and intellectuals of
Europe. The 96 works in this exhibition span her career from 1929 to 1964, taking us from
the cafes of Paris to the battlefields of World War II, and revealing the extremes of the
era and the richness of her life.
Miller was born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York and first entered the world of
photography as a model to some of the great photographers of her day. In 1929 she went to
Paris where she worked with Man Ray and established a photographic studio of her own.
Working first as a portraitist and fashion photographer, she later moved on to Surrealist
images. A marriage in 1932 took her to Cairo and later to London where she was working at
the outbreak of the war.
In 1944 Lee Miller became an accredited photographic correspondent to the US Army. She
was possibly the only woman combat photo-journalist and witnessed the liberation of Paris,
Buchenwald and Dachau, following the American troops on their overseas campaigns.
After the war Lee Miller continued to work for Vogue. In 1947 she married Roland
Penrose and produced the photographs for his biographies of Picasso, Miro, Man Ray and
Tapies. Lee Miler: Photographer will fascinate photographers, historians
and all those who enjoy the special entre into another's world provided by the
all-encompising eye of the skilled photographer's camera.
Brought to New Zealand and toured with the support of Kodak NZ Ltd
This exhibition was held at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in the Botanic Gardens.
|
