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Lee Miller

 Elizabeth ''Lee'' Miller (1907 – 1977), Lady Penrose was an American photographer and photojournalist. Miller moved to Paris in 1925 at the age of eighteen. There, she studied lighting, costume, and design before returning to New York in 1926 where she joined an experimental drama programme and began her studies of drawing and painting. Her modelling career earned her features in Vogue taken by fashion photographers like George Hoyningen-Huene. In the outbreak of WWII she became a war correspondent for Condé Nast. Her wartime photography led her to witness the first use of napalm bombing, she was present at the Blitz, the chaos following D-Day, the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Alsace, and the military’s entry into Nazi concentration camps – this made her one of the only U.S. army women photographers at the time to see combat.

 Miller had an active role in Surrealism's development within photography. She became apprentice and lover of Man Ray in 1929 when she travelled to Paris. Her association with a male surrealist quickly earned her the label of Muse, and despite the fact that she had her own photographic studio, several photographs taken by Miller are credited to Man Ray. In 1932 she left Man Ray and returned to New York city where she established a photography studio and she had her only solo exhibition at the Julien Levy gallery in 1933. She returned to Paris in 1937, where she met the British painter and curator Roland Penrose. Like many of the her female peers, Miller did not consider herself part of the surrealist group, nor did she abide by André Breton’s leadership. Despite this, unexpected juxtapositions, and the ambiguity of her dreamlike images can be classified as surrealist. Preferring to take a photograph than to be one, Miller’s unique visual style reclaims the female body, often fetishized in Surrealism.

 The work on display at Lilford Gallery is a P/P platinum paladium print of a photograph by Lee Miller. The photograph was taken in the summer of 1937 in Mougins. The picnic crowd are all current or former lovers and the photograph captures the atmosphere of openness, creative energy, and unity before the start of the war.