Lee Miller's Challenge to Surrealist Objectification of the Female Body

Authors

  • Lindsay Presswell

Abstract

This essay argues that Lee Miller’s photography actively criticizes the Surrealist genre for its objectification of women using the genre’s own techniques. Her body of work allows for a reflection on the shortcomings of celebrated Surrealist practices such as fetishizing fragmented female body parts. This paper begins by analyzing how Lee Miller’s photography can be classified as Surrealism in the first place. Her work is then analyzed chronologically to demonstrate the way that she uses double-image, juxtaposition, and depicting women as outsiders in her photography in order to criticize other male Surrealist artists for their insensitive and uncompromising objectification of the female form. Overall this essay showcases Lee Miller as an expert in her field with emphasis on the way she infiltrates Surrealism to make an attack on its chauvinistic tendencies.

Downloads

How to Cite

Presswell, L. (2017). Lee Miller’s Challenge to Surrealist Objectification of the Female Body. Revue YOUR Review (York Online Undergraduate Research), 2, 131. Retrieved from https://yourreview3.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/yourreview/article/view/40386

Issue

Volume 2 (2015)

Section

Abstracts & Posters

License

Authors contributing to Revue YOUR Review agree to release their articles under one of three Creative Commons licenses: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International; or Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. All editorial content, posters, and abstracts on this site are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. For further information about each license, see: 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

In all cases, authors retain copyright of their work and grant the e-journal right of first publication. Authors are able to enter into other contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the e-journal's published version of the article (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book or in another journal), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this e-journal.