Art review Dazzling career of photographer from Vogue to the frontline of war

Unapologetically ambitious and voraciously inventive, this vast new Lee Miller exhibition is the most comprehensive display of the late American photographer's work ever held in the UK.

- Charlotte Jansen

Lee Miller Tate Britain, London

It's an overdue account of a remarkable artist whose dazzling, daring career had more than a few twists: from Vogue cover girl to Vogue photographer; from surrealists' muse to pioneer of the movement; from commercial portraitist to war photographer.

Some of Miller's fabled work is here, including the self-portrait in Hitler's bathtub, her boots dirtied with mud from Dachau concentration camp-strewn on the floor. The exhibition builds a sense of the sometimes frenzied energy of Miller, who could photograph hats as well as Nazis who died by suicide. Yet, as her work pivots over the decades, swinging from frivolity to devastation, it is never jarring and never boring.

Miller understood the barbed nature of beauty profoundly.