The Fitzrovia Chapel is proud to announce our exhibition Lee Miller: Nurses held in conjunction with the Lee Miller Archives, and forming part of our ongoing cultural programme relating to the history of the chapel as part of the former Middlesex Hospital.
DATE SHOWN
Lee Miller is an iconic name in the world of photography and art, with a career that spans many realms from modelling to Surrealism to gourmet chef. She is most renowned, however, for her pioneering photography reporting on World War II. Lee Miller: Nurses presents 12 of her images from this period, focussing solely on nurses. We begin with a US army base in Oxford, then move to the front line in France, and then on into Austria and Germany. The images chosen celebrate the essential role of nurses in this period and explore the spectrum of friendship, romance, daily life and tragedy of these women at war.
At the advent of World War II in 1939, Lee Miller had just arrived in London with her British artist husband Roland Penrose. Her desire to become involved leads her to Vogue magazine and she began by photographing the Blitz in London and soon became their main fashion photographer. In 1942 she became accredited with the US army and after D-Day on 6 June 1944, she went to France to report from the front. Her accreditation as a war correspondent gave Miller access to be able to record the efforts of the women in the armed forces and other war efforts. The first article she wrote and photographed for British Vogue was nurses at a US army base in Oxford. Miller was constantly being drawn to covering a ‘woman’s story’. She photographed these American nurses at work – in their uniforms and in the operating theatre – and at play, with an off-duty nurse sidling up to a soldier in a phone booth. Although she was there to document daily life at the base, she also could not help but bring her Surrealist eye to proceedings, and in particular with the wonderful image of a nurse with rows of surgical gloves being dried and sterilised.
Her first article in Europe just after D-Day was on the same theme, reporting on American nurses at the 44th Evacuation field hospital in France, and was published in both British and US Vogue. Here she captured the daily life of nurses further. This time conditions in the field were harder but she showed their resourcefulness and resilience as they went about their ablutions outside or took part in operations in makeshift hospital tents. There were also depictions of nurses in positions of power, with Lt Gertrude Van Kirk, a prominent US nurse, signing the manifest for US charges that were stable enough to be evacuated to England.
In her next European article, which represented her first combat scoop in Saint Malo, there are images of German prisoner-of-war nurses chatting or pushing their belongings along the road in a cart. Miller was present at key moments in the close of the war including the siege of Saint Malo, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau. One of her most famous images is her sitting in Hitler’s bath tub in his apartment in Munich in 1945 on the day he killed himself, with her dirty boots from the concentration camps pointedly soiling the pristine bathmat. Throughout her time reporting for Vogue, she kept up a regular correspondence with British Vogue’s editor Audrey Withers, who was tasked with editing reams of candid and dynamic writing on what Lee had witnessed and the selection of often extremely difficult to view images. Miller’s most heart-breaking image in the exhibition is of a nurse standing over a bed in a children’s hospital in Vienna in 1945, Miller wrote: ‘For an hour I watched a baby die.’ Neither US or British Vogue published the article. For the exhibition Lee’s granddaughter Ami Bouhassane, will provide an accompanying audio to the images by reading aloud excerpts of Lee’s writing from the Vogue articles and her notebook.
The Fitzrovia Chapel was originally built as part of the Middlesex Hospital, and for decades was a place of respite and contemplation for medical staff, patients and visitors alike. The Middlesex was also a medical school where many doctors and nurses trained, and as such was the site of many formative friendships and memories for its alumni. When the hospital was closed in 2005, the chapel was saved from demolition because of its Grade II* listed status. It reopened in 2015 as a charity with one of its remits being for the promotion of culture and history for the community. As such our exhibition programme focuses on subjects that either directly or indirectly relate to The Middlesex Hospital or Fitzrovia.
<strong>’Nurses seeks to draw parallels and connections of Miller’s images of nurses with the legacy of the hospital and the community of nurses at the Middlesex.’ – Lee Miller</strong>
To support the work of The Fitzrovia Chapel and the Lee Miller Archives, there will be a new platinum print edition available of the image US Army nurse drying sterilised rubber gloves, Churchill Hospital, Oxford, England, 1943. Available in an edition of 10 at the exhibition, the first edition will also be part of the online Photographs sale at Sotheby’s 13-19 May 2022, where it will be auctioned along with the cut up negative of the image. The physical print and negative will be on display for the duration of the auction at Sotheby’s.
The public programme includes talks and tours of the exhibition as well as events that relate to the themes of the exhibition.
Photo credit: Lee Miller, US Army nurse drying sterilised rubber gloves Churchill Hospital Oxford England 1943 © Lee Miller Archives England 2022. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk
TALK
Lee Miller: Legacy and Archive with Ami Bouhassane and Brandei Estes.
TALK
Lee Miller: A Woman at Work and War with Katy Hessel and Ami Bouhassane
OVERVIEW
Built as part of the former Middlesex Hospital, the Fitzrovia Chapel reopened to the public in 2015 and now hosts cultural projects connected to the hospital and the surrounding area. Hidden among new developments, the chapel remains a quiet sanctuary, its stained glass and gold mosaic ceiling providing a striking setting for exhibitions and reflection. Within this space, Lee Miller’s photographs resonate alongside a recording of her granddaughter, Ami Bouhassane, reading from Miller’s thoughtful and poetic writing.
Miller’s photographs present nurses not as anonymous figures of wartime duty but as individuals full of character and humanity. She captured moments of everyday life as well as work: nurses brushing their teeth, sharing meals, relaxing off duty, or concentrating deeply in hospital wards and makeshift surgical tents. Even the sight of uniforms hanging to dry suggests the quiet rhythms of labour and care. Though taken in field hospitals and difficult circumstances, the images reveal Miller’s careful composition and artistic sensibility, reflecting her Surrealist background and her ability to balance tenderness with stark reality.
One particularly powerful photograph shows a nurse bending over a frail child in a hospital bed, a moment that Miller later described with heartbreaking clarity as she watched the child’s final hours. Taken in Vienna in 1945, after the end of the war, the image reflected the harsh conditions of a city where hospitals had been stripped of vital supplies. Unpublished at the time, it remains a deeply moving testament to Miller’s courage as a photographer and witness. Seen today, her work continues to resonate, offering a profound reflection on care, resilience and the enduring human presence within times of crisis.
ABOUT
Lee Miller was an American photographer, Surrealist artist and war correspondent whose remarkable career moved between fashion photography, avant garde experimentation and frontline journalism. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, she first gained international attention in the late 1920s as a model, appearing on the cover of Vogue. Determined to work behind the camera rather than in front of it, she moved to Paris where she became both collaborator and partner of Man Ray. Together they experimented with Surrealist photographic techniques, including the process of solarisation, while Miller developed her own striking visual language that combined elegance with psychological intensity.
In the 1930s Miller established a photography studio in New York before later living in Cairo and London. During the Second World War she became an accredited war correspondent for Vogue, documenting the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris and the liberation of concentration camps including Dachau concentration camp and Buchenwald concentration camp. Her photographs from the front lines remain among the most powerful visual records of the war and established her as one of the first female photojournalists to report directly from combat zones. Miller’s work combined the compositional sensitivity of an artist with the unflinching eye of a witness to history.
Earlier in her career Miller had also photographed the Middlesex Hospital, capturing an atmospheric image of a hospital ward that revealed her early fascination with architecture, human presence and the emotional charge of interior spaces. The photograph offers a quiet, observational counterpoint to the dramatic wartime images she later became known for, and connects her work to the social and institutional histories of London. After the war Miller settled in East Sussex with the British Surrealist artist Roland Penrose at Farley Farm House, where their home became a gathering place for artists, writers and cultural figures. Today Miller is recognised as one of the most important photographic voices of the twentieth century, whose work spans Surrealism, fashion and documentary photography while offering an extraordinary visual record of modern history.
