Lee Miller Retrospective at Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris presents a major retrospective of American photographer Lee Miller, spanning her career from 1929 to 1955. The exhibition traces her transformation from a fashion model and muse to a war correspondent. Miller began as a model for designers like Patou, Chanel, and Schiaparelli, and worked with photographers Edward Steichen, George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P. Horst, and Cecil Beaton. She became Man Ray's muse, model, and assistant in 1929, collaborating on solarizations and rayograms. In 1930, she opened her own studio in Paris and produced provocative works such as 'Severed Breast from Radical Surgery.' She photographed celebrities like Charlie Chaplin, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso. During World War II, she stayed in London and documented the Blitz for British Vogue, publishing 'Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire' in 1941. Accredited as a war correspondent in 1942, she covered the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Saint-Malo, and the liberation of Dachau on April 30, 1945. In a famous image, she posed nude in Hitler's bathtub in Munich. After the war, she suffered from depression and largely abandoned photography, storing 60,000 negatives in her attic. Her son Antony Penrose's biography details her postwar decline. Miller died in 1977, and her work was rediscovered posthumously. The exhibition runs from April 10 to August 2, 2026.