This fascinating exhibition, offering a detailed, thoughtfully-assembled overview of Miller’s career, leaves the visitor in no doubt that she was one of the finest, most important artists to have picked up a camera. I was fortunate enough to go in the show’s final weeks, and for those of you unable to get there, I hope this brief photo-tour gives you an idea of her work’s power.

Key to the exhibition’s success is how deftly it weaves the vital biographical and historical background into the hang. While every image can of course be appreciated in its own right, there’s an extra layer – a sweeping narrative that places Miller’s rapid development of an unmistakeable signature or style in the context of her extraordinary life.

In front of the camera, Miller was both fashion model and fashionable muse. Photos of Miller by other photographers during the early years suggest a supremely assured, yet somehow distant presence. Rather than pose to simply get the best angle or effect for the clothes, Miller’s gaze seems focused elsewhere, absent – perhaps in readiness for her ultimate vocation behind the lens.

This detachment comes into its own in her more surreal collaborations with then-partner Man Ray – a transitional phase where she was both maker and model. In the space of a few years, she was to move on altogether.

I felt that this theme of absence informed the entire exhibition. Miller’s own photos not only remove herself from the picture, but often conjure up an atmospheric emptiness, making a feature of spaces not filled.

When the time comes for Miller to document the war, this searching eye for the missing commemorates what is no longer there. 

And in her captivating portraits of friends and peers, in contrast to the sparse studio-bound setting in which she featured, she uses their own work and natural habitats to build both character and context.

If, then, Miller pursued a visual equivalent of the ‘removal of the narrator’ – in doing so, she established an extraordinarily distinctive, consistent body of work. An enigmatic self-portrait from 1950 seems to exemplify this: no longer the object of focus but somehow there in every frame.

AA

At the time of writing, the exhibition is open for a further week, until 15 February 2026.