The Lee Miller Archives, established after the American photographer's vast collection was discovered in the attic of her Sussex home following her death in 1977, is raising funds through an exhibition at Lyndsey Ingram gallery in London to conserve up to 60,000 negatives and prints, some nearly 100 years old and in perilous condition. The show, titled "Lee Miller: Performance of a Lifetime" (23 January-25 February), explores the role of theatre and performance in Miller's work from her 1929 arrival in Paris through her WWII photojournalism, with prices starting at £3,800. Proceeds will enable freezing and preservation of the archive stored at Farleys House, where Miller lived with her husband Roland Penrose.
This fundraising effort matters because it addresses the urgent conservation of a historically significant but long-overlooked photographic archive. Miller's granddaughter Ami Bouhassane notes that Miller never discussed her career, and her work was only discovered by chance decades after her death. The archive's preservation ensures that the legacy of a pioneering female war correspondent and Surrealist photographer—who covered the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald and struggled with PTSD—is secured for future generations, especially as her market recognition has grown only in the last 12 years.