LEE MILLER Photographer and surrealist at the Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi

Three years after the exhibition dedicated to Vivian Maier, the antique kitchens of the Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi present the life and photographs of another great twentieth-century photographer: LEE MILLER.

One of the most charming and mysterious figures of this era, a model of extraordinary beauty, a whimsical chef, a fearless war correspondent and a photographer of superlative skill.
In the photographs that depict her, her deep and clear eyes show through, which say a lot about her life, always lived with the maximum degree of intensity, in a constant search for herself.

“Lee Miller: Photographer and Surrealist” is an exhibition that traces the human and professional history of Lee Miller, focusing on the surrealistic eye of a photographer who, having been educated in the late 1920s in Paris, transcends this short time span and becomes a kind of trait his poetics.
Both her way of observing and the photographic lexicon she uses are surreal, characterized by the use of metaphors, antitheses and visual paradoxes aimed at revealing the extraordinary beauty of everyday life.

Exhibition curator Vittoria Mainoldi explains: “It is difficult to describe a woman of this caliber: her intimate life is complex, her biography is turbulent, her activities are extremely wide. Through this exhibition and a selection of its constituent works, we have attempted to recapture who Lee Miller was, but above all, what was his vision, unique in the history of photography in the last century.”

AT THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition features one hundred photographs from the Lee Miller Archive, which allow the visitor to discover not only Miller’s biography, but also her stylistic figure, unique in the panorama of early twentieth century photography.

The exhibition develops along various thematic directions: starting from work in a studio in Paris, where the photographer works on technical and compositional experiments, we move on to work related to the world of fashion and advertising, carried out in a New York studio. where Miller displays his skills as a portraitist and commercial photographer in moderation, never abandoning the surrealist figure. The identifier of this period is her self-portrait as she is busy promoting the headband in all its glory.

The figure of the surrealist also returns to his still lifes or landscapes, which enrich the body of his work when he moves to Egypt, as in the case of the “Portrait of Space” – a portrait of the cosmos taken towards the desert.

Due to his central role in the culture of the period, he also photographed the most famous artists of the time. The exhibition features a photograph of Charlie Chaplin posing with a candelabra on his head, portraits of Picasso and Dora Maar, as well as Miro, Magritte, Cocteau, Ernst and, invariably, Man Ray, whose muse and mistress she was. and before all colleagues, inventing with him the technique of solarization.

And then the war, immortalized in all its manifestations. London – now Lee Miller’s home after her marriage to Roland Penrose – has been devastated by the bombings, but daily life still goes on. And Paris, now liberated by the Allied forces, whom Lee follows on the front lines, becoming a Vogue correspondent at the front, as portrayed by David E. Sherman, was in turn the subject of one of Miller’s most iconic shots: the man with me wearing a gas mask. Finally, the horror of the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps in Germany, which Lee captured within hours of their liberation.

EXECUTOR

Created by Condé Nast on the cover of Vogue in 1927, Lee Miller immediately became one of the most valuable and sought-after fashion magazine models of the time. She has been portrayed by many photographers – Edward Steichen, George Heuningen-Hühne, Arnold Gente – and countless photo shoots in which she was the main character. Until two years later, he decides to move to the other side of the lens.
A stubborn and enterprising woman, she was deeply impressed by the images of the most important photographer of the time, Man Ray, whom she managed to meet, becoming his model and muse. But, more importantly, he establishes a strong creative and professional partnership with him, which together will lead them to develop a solarization technique.
A friend of Picasso, Ernst, Cocteau, Miro and the entire circle of surrealists, Miller opened her first studio in Paris during these years, becoming known as a portrait painter and fashion photographer, although the most important core of the work of this period is represented by surrealist images, many of which are erroneously attributed to Man Ray.
This corpus includes the famous Leaning Forward Nude, The Condom, and Tanya Ramm Under the Hood, the works featured in the exhibition, as well as other famous photographs that fully show how Lee Miller’s creative career was not only autonomous, but also technically mature and conceptually challenging. .
After this first formative period, in 1932 Miller decides to return to New York to open a new photography studio, which, despite its success, closes two years later when she decides to follow her husband, wealthy Egyptian businessman Aziz Elui, to Cairo. Bay.
She undertook long journeys through the desert and photographed villages and ruins, beginning to take up reportage photography, a genre that Lee Miller pursued in subsequent years, when he travels with Roland Penrose, the surrealist artist who would become her second husband. both in Southern and Eastern Europe.
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, she left Egypt for London and, ignoring orders from the American embassy to return home, began working as a freelance photographer for Vogue magazine.

Her most important contribution came in 1944, when she became an accredited correspondent for US troops and co-authored photographer David E. Sherman for Life and Time magazines.
She is the only female photographer to follow the Allies during D-Day, documenting actions at the front and during the liberation. His photographs vividly and never instructively testify to us about the siege of Saint-Malo, the liberation of Paris, the battles in Luxembourg and Alsace and the liberation of the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. It is during these hectic days that Hitler’s apartments in Munich are discovered and it is here that perhaps the most famous photograph of him presented at the exhibition was taken: a self-portrait in the Fuhrer’s bath.
After the war, Lee Miller continued to shoot for Vogue for another two years in fashion and lifestyle, but post-traumatic stress from his time at the front contributes to his slow departure from the art scene, even if his contributions to the biographies of Picasso, Miro , Man Ray and Tapies written by Penrose was fundamental both as a photographic and as an anecdotal apparatus.

BOOK

Published alongside the release of an important film about her life, this book celebrates the art of Lee Miller, one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century.
Edited by Anthony Penrose, son of Lee Miller and former author of the biography The Many Lives of Lee Miller, published in Italy by Contrasto, this volume brings together 100 of his most famous shots, combining fashion, portraiture, reportage and advertising.
The foreword is signed by Kate Winslet, who plays her character in the upcoming movie.

INFORMATION

LEE MILLER
Photographer and surrealist

September 9, 2023 to January 7, 2024
Hunting lodge Stupinigi
Vintage kitchens – Piazza Principe Amedeo 7 – Nichelino (TO)