The beach in wartime is transformed from a place of leisurely exploration, friendship and beauty; to a site of stark contrasts that are governed by the darker exposures of war, and disfigured by thick, black artillery smoke. In war, the beach becomes something else; off limits, mined, adorned with barbed wire and pillboxes, where convoys of unknown sailors and airmen wash-up on the morning shore. This exhibition’s thematic connection with Miller’s friends, is maintained in both sets of her seemingly opposing images. With Miller using the opportunities provided by war’s liberation to reconnect with some of the same people she had holidayed with five years earlier, only to find them much changed by the terror and deprivation of the war time occupation they had endured.
From her depictions of a peacetime South of France, to the atrocities of the Holocaust, Miller kept the same equipment in hand, as she documented the varied realities she faced. Samples of those cameras are exhibited in this show.
The sea and sky joined in a careless watercolor wash … A green valley up from a wide, busy beach had been a battle-ground – at the top, a new cemetery was being dug for six thousand of our dead
Lee Miller 1944
Curated by Lance Downie
