Dr Patricia Allmer (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Beyond Frontiers: Lee Miller’s Nomadic Surrealism
An anonymous photograph of Lee Miller in 1935 shows her wearing an Arabic headdress and holding a Rolleiflex camera. This photograph represents Miller as a nomadic icon appropriating Western and Middle Eastern signifiers of power – a figure whose international background and polyglot identity are defined by travelling and mobility.
This paper will read selected images from Lee Miller’s œuvre to argue that mobility, trans-nationalism and nomadism are located not only in her life, but are also key concepts of that œuvre, which ultimately proposes what Rosi Braidotti calls, in The Nomadic Subject, a “radical non-belonging.” Miller’s photographs map and trace nomadic spaces, from the shifting dunes of the Egyptian desert to the changing territories and deterritorialisations of war-torn frontiers, and use discursive iconographies such as those provided by fashion history to reveal and explore the constructedness and fragility of national identity. Through these strategies, Miller pushes Surrealist photography beyond its own (national and ideological) frontiers, revealing the nomadic potentials of Surrealist art.
This paper will read selected images from Lee Miller’s œuvre to argue that mobility, trans-nationalism and nomadism are located not only in her life, but are also key concepts of that œuvre, which ultimately proposes what Rosi Braidotti calls, in The Nomadic Subject, a “radical non-belonging.” Miller’s photographs map and trace nomadic spaces, from the shifting dunes of the Egyptian desert to the changing territories and deterritorialisations of war-torn frontiers, and use discursive iconographies such as those provided by fashion history to reveal and explore the constructedness and fragility of national identity. Through these strategies, Miller pushes Surrealist photography beyond its own (national and ideological) frontiers, revealing the nomadic potentials of Surrealist art.
