Lee Miller: A Woman at War exhibition

Me with smallest and tallest (Lee Miller with Jean Peltier and Sergeant Robert Burchfield), Luxembourg 1944 by Unknown Photographer (6106-120)

© Lee Miller Archives, England 2026. All rights reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk   

Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, the county’s military museum based in Woodstock, opens a new exhibition of Vogue model, surrealist photographer and war correspondent Lee Miller’s wartime work in Lee Miller: A Woman at War, from 23 May to 13 September 2026.

During the Second World War Lee worked as a combat photographer with the US Army, creating a unique historical record.

The new exhibition will showcase her experiences of the time, covering her war correspondence work for Vogue from 1942 where she highlighted women’s roles in the war effort, as well as the reality of life for women caught up in conflict across Europe. Her first wartime assignment for Vogue captured nurses at work at a then-US Army hospital in Oxford – Headington’s Churchill Hospital. A number of these photos will feature in the exhibition, returning to the county in which they were taken, a look back at the earliest days of her war photojournalism.

Miller would become one of the few female photojournalists on the front line covering the Normandy invasion and the liberation of Paris. Her work in the newly-liberated concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau was sent to Vogue in 1945, accompanied by the caption ‘I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE.’

Her background in surrealism often came to the fore especially with her photographs of the Blitz, and the iconic photograph of her bathing in Hitler’s bathtub in Munich on the same day he died was heavy in symbolism, she wrote ‘I washed off the dirt of Dachau in his tub’.

Her 60,000+ negatives and documents were discovered in her attic by her son, Antony Penrose, after her death, leading to her recognition as a pivotal 20th-century artist and photographer.

Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum is thrilled to be exhibiting her groundbreaking work and are grateful to the Lee Miller Archives and Farleys House & Gallery Ltd for allowing us to bring you this exhibition.

Lee Miller: A Woman at War continues the development of the museum’s ongoing work to highlight creative responses to conflict alongside more traditional narratives, examine the role of popular culture in how we see conflict, as well as the role of women as not just witnesses of war but in shaping the course and history of it too.

Alongside the exhibition, the museum will host a 1940s photography ‘Pro Am’ with Oxford Photographic Society on Sunday 7 June 2026, offering the chance for professional and amateur photographers alike to capture photos inspired by Lee’s photojournalism. Living historians in wartime fashions and uniforms will provide models at the museum, around Woodstock, and at Blenheim Palace. Ami Bouhassane, Lee Miller’s granddaughter and author of several books on her grandmother’s life and work, will also visit the museum for an evening talk at 7pm, 3 September 2026. Check the museum’s website for further details and tickets for these events, when available.

Lee Miller: A Woman at War opens on the Cloister Gallery at Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock from 23 May to 13 September 2026.

Admission prices apply, please see www.sofo.org.uk for up-to-date admissions and visitor information, including prices, offers and opening times.

Please note: Our free entry offer for Blenheim Annual Pass holders does not include entry to the Lee Miller exhibition, but all other galleries are included.