From April 10 to August 2, 2026, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris presents a major retrospective devoted to Lee Miller. The ambition matches the figure: to offer a complete view of a photographer whose life has often overshadowed her work, even though her images move with the same rigor through portraiture, fashion, the avant-garde, and war reportage.
The museum announces around 250 prints (vintage and modern), including some rarely shown, in a structured journey that connects her key periods: New York, Paris, Egypt, London, then wartime Europe.
An extraordinary path, from studio to frontline
To understand Lee Miller, you have to forget the fixed image of the “muse”. Her story is rather one of a shift in power: first in front of the camera (a model in New York in the late 1920s), then behind it (an independent photographer), then at the heart of events (a war correspondent).
This turning point is not just a career change, it is a rise in autonomy. The more she frees herself, the more her gaze becomes precise and tougher, without ever losing what makes her singular: an intelligence of framing and light inherited from the studio.
How did she become a photographer? Who trained her?
The decisive turning point happens in Paris in 1929, when she seeks training with Man Ray. She does not attend a school: she learns in the studio, through practice, in direct contact with the darkroom, printing, and experimentation.
This period is foundational for three reasons:
- End-to-end training: photography is not only about taking the picture. It is also made in the darkroom: controlling tonal values, choosing paper, shaping the final result. This printing culture explains the strength of her images.
- The studio as a school of seeing: directing the subject, precision of light, demanding setups. Even when she turns to reportage, this rigor remains visible in the way she structures reality.
- Experimentation: she is associated with the history of solarization (the Sabattier effect), developed in Man Ray’s circle. This is not a decorative “trick”, it shows her proximity to the avant-garde and her taste for creative accidents.
Then comes the step that changes everything: she does not remain an “assistant”. She asserts herself as a photographer in her own right, works for the press and commissions, and develops a signature that is immediately recognizable, and yet never banal.
The work: portraits, fashion, surrealism, documentary
Portraiture as a through line
The exhibition opens with portraits of Lee Miller made by major figures of the 1920s-1930s: you immediately understand how she was first a public image, before becoming an author.
Then portraiture shifts in meaning: for her, it is not only about a face. It is about presence. In the studio as in the field, she gives her subjects density: attitude, distance, light, context, everything helps reveal a person rather than decorate them.
Paris: the avant-garde as a laboratory
Her Paris years connect her to surrealism and formal experimentation. You do not come here for “effects”, but for that typical avant-garde feeling: a frame that shifts reality by one notch, without making it vague.
Fashion and commissions: elegance as a visual language
Photographing for a magazine is not trivial: commissions require clarity, efficiency, narrative strength. Lee Miller excels because she turns elegance into construction: rhythm, silhouette, space, presence. The museum places these images back into a larger story to show they fully belong to her work.
Egypt then London: the same rigor, different landscapes
The journey then moves through her stay in Egypt and her life in London, two moments that share the same tension between observation and composition: bringing out structure, balance, form, even far from the studio.
War: engagement without abandoning form
The retrospective devotes a major section to the war years in Europe: Lee Miller becomes a correspondent, follows events up close, documents ruins, faces, and the war effort. The museum presents this period as one of the peaks of her career, where visual boldness and commitment meet.
It is also where her singularity becomes clear: even when facing the unrepresentable, she seeks neither sensationalism nor gratuitous aestheticizing. She looks for proof, trace, memory, with a rigor that makes her images all the more striking.
What you can expect from the exhibition
The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris announces:
- around 250 prints, vintage and modern, including some rarely shown,
- a six-part journey (chronological and thematic),
- an exhibition developed in collaboration with Tate Britain and the Art Institute of Chicago, with the participation of the Lee Miller Archives.
Why this exhibition is a must-see in 2026
Because it finally moves beyond an overly simple summary: “surrealist muse turned war photographer”. Here you see a complete author: portraiture, fashion, research, documentary, with a coherence rarely shown at this scale, and a perspective that does justice to the density of her work.
Practical information
Address: 11 avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris.
Days and opening hours:
- Tuesday to Sunday: 10:00 am-6:00 pm (ticket office closes at 5:15 pm).
- Late opening on Thursday: until 9:30 pm (temporary exhibitions).
- Closed on Monday (including May 1).
Exhibition admission:
- Full price: €17
- Reduced price: €15
- Free: under 18
