Paige Lee Miller
- Editor at Titan Contemporary Publishing
- Jan 27
- 3 min read
Paige Lee Miller is a photographer and video artist who has exhibited in London. Recent exhibitions include Dalston Den, Photobook Cafe, University of the Arts, and the London College of Fashion. Her work has been published by University of the Arts London, Sanxtuary Magazine, Spark Magazine, and L'Officiel Mexico. Paige also currently works as a photographer at the Victoria & Albert Museum in addition to work on fashion and music.
Using a variety of techniques from photo collage to a process of printing / burning / scanning to dramatic theatrical lighting, the photography of Paige Lee Miller expresses concepts based in neurodivergent behavior and thought processes. Other concepts in her work include the nihilism we experience in the digital era as well as “chronically-online generations”, as she describes. Through textured monochromatic surfaces, compositions, and backgrounds as well as performative figure photography based in a senes of melancholines, the photographs reveal social and individual decay. This depiction of inner-erosion derives from Paige Lee Miller’s philosophical musings about the passage of time and mental fragility. In the photography, we will find a combination of actors and models behaving and presented in a way which they seem like fashionable apparitions, if such a notion were to make any sense. The incorporation of clever costume design and grainy analogue manipulation processes reveals a realm of photography and image-making steeped in conceptual communication of psychological impulses as well as expressing a notion of deep individuality.
The various costumes, props, and set design found in Paige Lee Miller’s photography range from wires to dresses and blowses with repeated holes to object installations (such as a pile of tires) to locations which can seem as intimate as a bedroom or remote as an abandoned warehouse. This variety of motifs and her processes of image manipulation of distortion which can be described as a ghostly encounter based in earth tones. As a result, based on the color choice in some of the photography, the apparitional qualities may seem more of a haunting sense or an expression of hell, rather than a purgatory or sort of heavenly presence. The visual substance in Paige Lee Miller’s photography conveys environments and improvised reactionary figurative capturing. She conveys the body language and facial expressions of actors, as well as performative actions, in a way which reflects the nihilism in social interactions within digital realms. Such social distancing occurs in isolation, as expressed in her works as there are no groups of models, only singular actors posturing in a contextual inversion displayed in the photographs.
AoR V. 2 (pictured above) depicts a montage of a woman seemingly content with herself as her hair and fare features overtake the entire composition. Such an image becomes juxtaposed against a display of abstraction to the right, which contains a seated figured in a heavily monochromatic earth tone silhouette. The entire set and actor is covered in a brown-orange shadow in contrast to the well-lit woman to the left. Through a dichotomy between a close, cropped portraiture based in individuality and a distant figurative abstraction which seems ominous and haunting, the viewer is left with an interpretation of social contrast and distance.
With a complex portfolio and passion for analogue processes and performative capturing, Paige Lee Miller communicates concepts in individual expression as well as environmental and social nihilism based on the seemingly lack of purpose of the digital era and digitized realms. Her works can be described as a cross between ‘analogue pixelization’, so to speak, and performative reflection on philosophical identity in the contemporary era. The concepts within her works based in neurodivergent experiences reflects a willingness to take on pressing social issues, such as ableism and how we treat people with neurological disabilities.
