Bologna to host Italian premiere of retrospective dedicated to Lee Miller

From March 14 to June 9, 2019, Palazzo Pallavicini in Bologna will host the Italian premiere of the retrospective dedicated to one of the most important female photographers of the 20th century, Lee Miller.

Surrealist Lee Miller will present to the public 101 photographs tracing the photographer’s entire artistic career through her most famous and iconic shots, including those taken in Hitler’s apartments, rarely exhibited even internationally and never circulated in print due to their misuse over the years by neo-Nazi groups.

Launched by Condé Nast, on the cover of Vogue in 1927, Lee Miller immediately became one of the most popular and sought-after models in fashion magazines. Many photographers immortalized her, including Edward Steichen, George Hoyningen-Huene, or Arnold Genthe, until she herself decided to switch to the other side of the lens.
A headstrong and resourceful woman, she was fascinated by the images of the most important photographer of the time, Man Ray, whose model and muse she became; together they also developed the technique of solarization.
A friend of Picasso, Ernst, Cocteau, Miró and the entire circle of Surrealists, Miller opened her first studio in Paris in these years, becoming known as a portrait and fashion photographer, although the most important nucleus of works in this period is certainly the Surrealist images. To the latter belong the famous Nude bent forward, Condom and Tanja Ramm under a bell jar, works featured in the exhibition, alongside other famous shots.
She subsequently embarked on long journeys into the desert and photographed villages and ruins, beginning to engage with reportage photography, a genre that Lee Miller continued in later years when, together with Roland Penrose-the Surrealist artist who would become her second husband-she traveled in both southern and eastern Europe.
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, she left Egypt and moved to London, where she began working as a freelance photographer for Vogue. She documented the relentless bombing of London, but her most important contribution would come in 1944 when she was an accredited correspondent following American troops and a collaborator with photographer David E. Scherman for Life and Time magazines. She was the only female photographer to follow the Allies on D-Day, documenting activities at the front during the liberation. Her photographs vividly and never didactically bear witness to thesiege of St. Malo, the Liberation of Paris, the fighting in Luxembourg and Alsace, and, in addition, the liberation of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. It was during these fevered days that the discovery of Hitler’s apartments in Munich was made, and it was here that he took what is probably his most famous photograph: the Führer’s self-portrait in the bathtub.

The retrospective is presented by Palazzo Pallavicini and ONO contemporary art.

For info: www.palazzopallavicini.com

Hours: Thursday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Image: Lee Miller, Self portrait with headband (1932; New York) © Lee Miller Archives England 2018. All Rights Reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk

Bologna to host Italian premiere of retrospective dedicated to Lee Miller

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