Curated by Julian Bell, Dimbola Museum and Galleries announces two new Spring exhibitions; Style is Strength – Lee Miller: The Forties Fashion Photos, and Marco Sanges: One Step Closer.
Fashion photographer Lee Miller captured the essence of women for magazines such as British Vogue. Living in war time Britain, she turned her talents towards documenting the experience of women during the passage of World War II.
Wartime women as they have never been seen before
On loan from Farley’s House, Miller’s postwar Sussex home, this exhibition will show wartime women as they have never been seen before. Of the photographs in the collection, some evoke the urgency and resourcefulness of wartime Britain without being too explicit. In others, though, Miller does not disguise the wartime context of her work: defiantly, models pose in front of the destruction inflicted by the devastating bombing raids of the Blitz.
In her piece ‘Check Mate’, distributed in British Vogue in 1943, Miller drew attention to the difficulties of publishing colour photography in wartime. Through ‘Hats Assignment’, she urged the public to fight the war with fashion.
Style is Strength – Lee Miller: The Forties Fashion Photos
The Lee Miller collection on display at Dimbola this spring will showcase examples of her work from 1940-1944, demonstrating the attitudes of women during WWII. Brought together, Miller’s work will show how these women would not bow down to the harsh realities of war, striving instead to maintain their feminine strength with pride.
What’s charisma? Is it the power one person possesses, to turn our heads their way? Yes, but not just that. The person with charisma is themselves possessed – by a dream. Some inward fantasy pulls along the star we all gaze up at. It’s a drive from who knows where that energizes them, perhaps beyond their own control. Beyond ours. All we can do is fall in with it.
One Step Closer: Marco Sanges
That is the dynamic of One Step Closer, the thrilling photo project on which Marco Sanges has embarked. Sanges is working with iconic figures of our times, but what he’s delivering are not conventionally flattering portraits. Rather, they are collaborations in which the subject and the artist lean in together – closer and closer – to visualize that flame of fantasy within. The results are by turns rapturous, hilarious and scary: often, of their nature, wildly melodramatic; in every case, imprinted with the uniqueness of the sitter.
It takes not only warm camerawork to close in in this way – Sanges’s tones and palettes are delicious – but a warmth of fellow feeling.
The photographer himself is fired by romance, his chiaroscuros recalling the 1940s heyday of black-and-white glamour shots by the likes of Lee Miller.
Equally, it is all of a piece that Sanges will be dedicating the profits from this project to the homelessness charity ‘Under One Sky’. Charisma draws us in, sure: attention and cash get sucked into its current. Yet equally, charisma restores us. It beams out lights of fascination that brighten our days. The initiative of Sanges is making that giveback practical and actual, with bold new art.
Where and when
The exhibitions run from 2nd February until 18th May 2025 and have been curated by celebrated artist and writer Julian Bell, President of Dimbola Museum and Galleries.
The Lee Miller collection comes to Dimbola on loan from the Lee Miller Archives.
News shared by Kelly on behalf of Dimbola Museum and Galleries. Ed
