A major exhibition celebrating the wartime photography of Lee Miller will open at Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum this summer, offering a powerful insight into one of the 20th century’s most remarkable photojournalists.
Titled Lee Miller: A Woman at War, the exhibition will run from 23 May to 13 September 2026 and follows a major showcase of her work at Tate Gallery.
It will present a wide-ranging collection of images documenting Miller’s experiences during the Second World War, when she worked as a combat photographer with the US Army.
The exhibition explores her groundbreaking war correspondence for Vogue from 1942, where she highlighted women’s contributions to the war effort as well as the realities faced by civilians across Europe.
Among the featured works are photographs from her first wartime assignment, capturing nurses at Churchill Hospital. These images return to the county where they were originally taken, offering a poignant connection to the early stages of her career in war photography.
Miller went on to become one of the few female photographers on the front line, covering key moments including the Normandy invasion and the liberation of Paris.
Her documentation of the concentration camps at Buchenwald concentration camp and Dachau concentration camp was published in 1945 with the striking caption: “I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE.”
Her distinctive surrealist background is also reflected in the exhibition, notably in her images of the Blitz and the iconic photograph taken in Munich of her bathing in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub on the day of his death, accompanied by her words: “I washed off the dirt of Dachau in his tub”.
After her death, more than 60,000 negatives and documents were discovered in her attic by her son, Antony Penrose, cementing her legacy as a pivotal figure in modern photography.
The museum’s exhibition has been developed in collaboration with the Lee Miller Archives and Farleys House & Gallery Ltd, and forms part of an ongoing effort to explore creative responses to conflict and the role of women in shaping its history.
Alongside the exhibition, events will include a 1940s-themed photography ‘Pro Am’ with the Oxford Photographic Society on 07 June 2026, as well as an evening talk by Miller’s granddaughter, Ami Bouhassane, on 03 September 2026.
