Title: Pioneer in the Desert: Lee Miller
- Sergio Volpi
- Aug 25
- 2 min read
In the seventh episode on Western Female Travellers, we focus on Lee Miller’s visits to Siwa.
Lee Miller, one of the most innovative figures in twentieth-century photography, between 1934 and 1939, while living in Cairo with her husband Aziz Eloui Bey, undertook repeated journeys to the Siwa Oasis, boldly facing the challenges of a roughly 900 kilometer route across the Libyan desert.
Fascinated by the history of Siwa, Miller captured the oasis in numerous photographs, documenting a pivotal moment in her artistic exploration. Her encounter with North African landscapes, local culture, and the ruins of the ancient temple of Amun fueled a visual poetics suspended between reportage and surrealism.
The most famous testimony from these journeys is the photograph "Portrait of Space, near Siwa, Egypt" (1937), now considered a modern icon of photography. This work, taken near Siwa, represents a threshold between interior and exterior, reality and vision: the landscape emerges through a tear in the mosquito net of the tent, symbolizing the search for meaning that characterizes Miller’s Egyptian production.
Miller's time in Siwa was not just a travel episode—it marked a true turning point in international photographic language, where the desert experience became a source of new creative hybridizations between European avant-garde and Mediterranean culture. The images taken in Siwa, now preserved in major museums worldwide, are the result of an encounter between geography, history, and imagination that continues to inspire scholars and enthusiasts.
In recent years, Lee Miller’s legacy has been greatly re-evaluated in the West, also thanks to the biographical film about her as a war photographer, starring Kate Winslet.
Many countries have held exhibitions of her work, yet Miller’s contributions in Egypt remained largely overlooked until today, when the new cultural initiative launched by Dr. Mounir Neamatallah, entitled “Entr’acte Siwa,” materialized with the publication of a book of the same name and the creation of a permanent exhibition in Siwa, near Adrère Amellal, in a splendid karchif building by the lakeside.
Comments