Heide Museum of Modern Art has unveiled a major survey exhibition of ground-breaking twentieth century American photographic artist Lee Miller (1907–1977), presented from 4 November 2023 to 25 February 2024. Curated by Miller’s son Antony Penrose, the exhibition Surrealist Lee Miller brings 100 photographs from across the artist’s remarkable oeuvre to Australia.

While known for her war work and portraits of her famous contemporaries like Picasso (who painted Lee Miller six times), it is Miller’s surrealist images that endure with a fresh directness. Through the 100 photographs on display at Heide, audiences will discover the artist’s strong sense of the surrealist notions of incongruity, dislocation, dark humour and the uncanny, and her ability to perceive and capture surprising juxtapositions or elements of the marvellous in everyday subjects. Miller’s surrealist eye extends to her remarkable work as an official correspondent during the Second World War and creation of images in which the unreality of war assumes a disquieting beauty.