From Beautiful to Horrendous: how Lee Miller used photography to record an extraordinary era

Tate Britain’s exhibition is a voyage of the 20th century, as seen by one of the most innovative photographers of the time.

Lee Miller, Model Elizabeth Cowell wearing Digby Morton suit, London 1941. Lee Miller Archives © Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk.

Lee Miller was the “greatest photographer of the 20th century”, according to Tate curator Hilary Floe. Portrayed by Kate Winslet in a recent biopic, she is as legendary as her photographs.

This exhibition, praised by Miller’s son Antony Penrose for being thorough and true, shows the multifaceted nature of her career. First, she was a model, who studied art and design, then she became a fashion photographer, a surrealist, and a war correspondent. Her images combined humour and originality; she saw herself as an artist and photography as a thoroughly up-to-date medium.

“Painting, it seems to me, has no relation to modern life… photography is more subtle and swifter. It is modern, suited to the tempo and the spirit of today,” she told Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in 1932.

Installation Photography of Lee Miller at Tate Britain, 2 October 2025 – 15 February 2026. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk. Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania).

Organised chronologically, the exhibition reveals not only the progress of Miller’s career, but also of the 20thcentury in Europe and the US. A single room avoids sequential logic by placing a multitude of portraits of Lee’s contemporaries in one place. This only intensifies the feeling that her work provides a record of the incredible time in which she lived.

The first room presents to us Lee the model in the 1920s. A stunningly beautiful woman, she was photographed by some of the period’s most renowned photographers. Very soon though, she discovered that she “would rather take a picture than be one”. (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 1932).

This led her to Paris and to Man Ray. Enlisting herself as his student, she then lived and worked together with him – so closely in fact that accurately attributing their photographs from this period is difficult. Artistic nudes dominate in this room full of self-exploration and technical experimentation.

Lee Miller, Untitled, Paris 1930. Lee Miller Archives. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk.

Europe provided her with enough material for several parallel facets of her practice. She made unusual portraits of her Avant Garde colleagues and peculiar surrealist images of Parisian streets. Some photographs brought the two together – using city architecture as a prop for her portraits.

Just as you begin to make sense of all the unusual camera angles and points of view, placing Miller safely in a Surrealist box, the next room in the show forces you to follow the artist on her next adventure. The images of Cairo and Syria have an aesthetic reminiscent of travel blogs. Abstract-seeming sand formations and flying turban fabrics add drama and a sense of mystique to this part of the world.

Miller’s images often relied on arranged compositions, props, costumes and lighting. On returning to Europe, she continued making playful portraits of her friends, many of them artists themselves. In one example – a photo of Joseph Cornell, an artist famous for collage – she manipulated the image in the dark room to create a collage-like effect.

Lee Miller, Portrait of Space, Al Bulwayeb near Siwa 1937. Lee Miller Archives. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk.

All this practice came to good use in her work for British Vogue publications during World War II. Austerity and rationing meant that clothing was scarce and plain. However, Lee’s photographs are anything but simple. Her use of props, playing with shadow, and ingenious printing techniques ensured that the images were fabulous despite the difficulties of the times.

As an American, Lee was encouraged to return to the US but refused. Rather, she was keen to contribute to the war effort by recording what was happening around her. Her poignant pictures of Blitz London found lightness in the dark times. Partly due to her own choice and partly due to censorship rules of the time, there was a limit on the amount of devastation she could show. Ironic titles such as ‘Non-conformist chapel’, underlined the defiant spirit for which the period is renowned. A published book based on her photos became popular both in the US and the UK.

Lee also turned her lens on women at work. You’ll find here mechanics, searchlight operators, parachute folders, airplane pilots, to name but a few. Miller herself could be the subject of a series of women doing (and excelling at) work that, in peacetime, was reserved for men. Her American passport took her one step further than her British contemporaries could go: she was allowed to become a war journalist and to access combat zones in Europe.

Lee Miller, David E. Scherman dressed for war, London 1942. Lee Miller Archives. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk.

She wrote and photographed for both British and American Vogue. Following the US troops around Europe, she usually arrived at locations shortly after battles. Avoiding direct depictions of violence, she relied heavily on her gift for metaphor.

However, there was a time when she felt compelled to abandon the restrictions and photograph the horrors she saw in front of her: the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. (At the entrance to the room featuring these images, there is content guidance and visitor photography is prohibited.) She implored Vogue to believe it was true and to publish them; they did.

Although immensely shaken by the experience, Miller continued to photograph Europe in the aftermath of the war. The gallery texts suggest that there was an internal conflict between Lee the writer and Lee the photographer. Her writings were clear on her disdain for enemy civilians; her pictures however suggest a more nuanced approach. This may be due to the changing attitudes to war-time civilians, rather than Lee’s own vision, but it is hard to know for sure.

Installation Photography of Lee Miller at Tate Britain, 2 October 2025 – 15 February 2026. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk. Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania).

Once Condé Nast stopped supporting her work in Europe, she had to return to Britain. There she continued fashion photography and was involved in art circles, making more portraits of artist friends.

In an extraordinary era, Lee Miller used photography to tell stories that needed to be heard. Her experiences were unique for a woman at the time and she made sure to “get out on a damn limb and saw it off behind her” (St Petersburg Times, 6 Oct. 1969). This alone makes this show worth seeing.

Lee Miller is at Tate Britain until 15 February 2026.