LONDON.- TJ Boulting is now carrying out a Lee Miller exhibition in association with the Lee Miller Archives You Will Not Lunch In Charlotte Street Today. The title is taken from one of Lee's images of Charlotte Street in London during World War II, a street which is a stone's throw from where TJ Boulting is situated in Fitzrovia. The exhibition serves as a parallel to the forthcoming film on the life of Lee Miller LEE starring Kate Winslet, and also follows a recent publication of Lee's first photobook by her son Antony Penrose, published by Thames and Hudson.

You Will Not Lunch In Charlotte Street Today presents various themes from across Lee Miller's prolific photographic output, from the 1930s in France and her beginnings in surrealism and her circle of artist friends, to the 1940s and London during the War, to her time in Germany at its close in 1945. In particular the exhibition highlights Lee's portraits of women, as iconic and inspiring as Lee herself, from artist Leonora Carrington to war reporter Martha Gelhorn.

The prints being shown are all modern silver gelatin prints, produced by Carole Callow for the Lee Miller Archives from the 1980s until her retirement in 2017. After 36 years of Carole being their estate printer, and only printer, the archives decided to not have more silver gelatin prints produced, asides from what Carole had made.

Six images form part of a box set Quintessential Lee, an iconic retrospective of images curated by Mark Haworth Booth when he was senior curator of photography at the V&A, to coincide with Lee Miller's centenary exhibition at the V&A in 2007. Since the 90s the Lee Miller Archives has also printed small platinum palladium edition prints made by 31 Studio, one of which is the beautiful self-portrait taken by Lee in her New York studio in 1932, a detail of which is on the cover of Antony's book.

Lee Miller’s career was as diverse as her talent, she moved effortlessly from her early days as a model in front of the camera to artist and photographer behind it. Not content with gracing the pages of her native US Vogue she moved to Paris in her twenties and designated herself as assistant to the artist Man Ray. What followed was an important relationship both personally and professionally. Whilst on the streets of Paris Lee also discovered her affinity for the ‘found image’ and its inferences for surrealism – a female hand reaching for a handle of a scratched glass door became under Lee’s interpretation Exploding Hand. With Man Ray she also discovered the technique of ‘solarisation’, which gave a striking dark halo around the edge of figures in photographs. By the time Lee went back to New York and set up her own successful studio a few years later, she found her style much in-demand, with society lady Dorothy Hill demanding a solarised portrait of her own in 1933 as her pre-wedding picture.

TJ Boulting
Lee Miller: You Will Not Lunch In Charlotte Street Today
November 23rd, 2023 - January 20th, 2024