Farleys House and Gallery, the former home of Lee Miller in the English countryside, is a special place. Nestled amongst hills and surrounded by gardens, it was a private refuge for Miller, who was known as a model, fashion photographer and WWII war correspondent. For 35 years, she filled the house with art, food, and friends, welcoming some of the leading artists of the 20^th century including Pablo Picasso, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, and Man Ray.

Not long ago, artist Gisela Torres led a Surrealist photography workshop at Farleys and, wandering the grounds between sessions, stumbled upon a small outbuilding. Through a window, she glimpsed an eerie sight that resembled a spectral gathering – ghostly forms hovering in the half-light. On closer inspection, they revealed themselves as garment bags and folds of tissue paper. It was here that Miller’s wardrobe was being kept temporarily, before being moved to long-term storage.

What Lee Wore emerges from Torres’ encounter with this strange landscape of pale fabrics and shifting textures. Shot on Polaroid and digital cameras, the muted, atmospheric images feel suspended in time, creating a dreamlike vision that invites reflection on Miller’s simultaneous presence and absence. From the feel of its tissue-like pages to its delicate stitch-binding, What Lee Wore is a hauntingly beautiful object to behold.

JILKE GOLBACH is a curator at Foam, where she develops group and solo exhibitions of historic and contemporary photographs, including Martin Parr (2026), Verena Blok (2026) and Augusta Curiel (2025). She was previously Curator of Photographs at the Museum of London and has held curatorial positions at the Barbican Art Gallery in London and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. She has a specific interest in art and photography at the intersection of personal narratives and systemic critique, developing projects that engage with themes of gender, sexuality, wellbeing, and urban space, such as Phil Polglaze’s Bog Jobs: A Case For The Defence, first shown at Photo Oxford (2025). She has published widely on art and photography, including in titles such as Vitamin V: Video and the Moving Image in Contemporary Art (2025), Fracture: Ecology. Time. Humanity (2023), London in Lockdown (2021), and for 1000Words and Foam magazine. She holds a PhD from University College London. 

GISELA TORRES is an American multidisciplinary artist and arts educator living and working in London. Trained as a photographer and filmmaker, her practice focuses on the dynamic interplay between traditional and emerging art forms to depict narratives where the familiar, mysterious and otherwordly co-exist. Encompassing still and moving images, self-portraiture, performance, printmaking, sculpture, and digital technologies, her work is anchored in the very process of making, juxtaposing the material with the immaterial. She has exhibited internationally including at Le Musee des Beaux-Arts du Locle (MBAL), Switzerland; the Freud Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Photographers’ Gallery, Peckham24 and the Royal Academy of Arts, London; and Brighton Biennial. As a freelance arts educator, she delivers talks and workshops on exhibitions, visual literacy and photography to young people, adults and outreach communities at venues including the National Portrait Gallery, the Photographers’ Gallery, the V&A, and the University of the Arts, London.