Fundraising exhibit of war photographer Lee Miller launched to save her work
A London exhibition showcasing the work of renowned war photographer Lee Miller is fundraising to save hundreds of her historic negatives.
The Lee Miller: Performance of a Lifetime exhibition is on display from January 23rd to February 25th at the Lyndsey Ingram art gallery in the capital city, where sales of the works on show will contribute towards the preservation of over 60,000 of the photographer’s negatives, the condition of which are rapidly deteriorating in some cases.
The fundraising is being run by The Lee Miller Archives, which was established following the photographer’s death in 1977. The archives is run out of her Farley’s House home in East Sussex, where her portfolio was discovered in the attic following her passing.
Having first started her career as a fashion photographer, Miller switched her subjects towards the end of the Second World War, uncovering the true horrors that occurred in concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald for publications including Vogue and Life.
However, with the condition of some of her oldest negatives now having significantly declined, it is hoped that profits from the new exhibition will fund the freezing and preservation of these works.
According to Miller’s granddaughter, Ami Bouhassane, who now works for the archive, the photographer was extremely modest about her achievements. She told The Art Newspaper: “She never talked about her career,” adding, “My dad had no idea. He knew that she’d been a photographer, that she could take good pictures and that she’d been a model, but he had no idea at what level, and he had absolutely no idea about what she’d done during the war.”
The archive is planning to work with a museum in Norway which has a specialist freezer for preserving photographs. Speaking about this, Bouhassane continued: “It’s really the only way that you can stop them from degrading completely. Luckily [you] can do it in a domestic freezer, but it’s now a matter of finding space for all the freezers we will need.”
Miller’s life story was previously committed to the Hollywood screen in a 2023 biopic starring Kate Winslet, who also produced the film during a creative process lasting eight years.
The film received a positive critical response, as well as award nominations at the Golden Globes and the Baftas, including for ‘Outstanding British Film’.
