When the Mundane Meets the Macabre: Looking Through the Lens of Elisa Miller

French photographer Elisa Miller captures the expectations and external pressures of womanhood in her work. She focuses on the performative aspect of navigating society and the masks women wear to survive.

This theme of appearance versus reality is striking in her self-portrait series Eyes Without a Face. In these black-and-white images, Miller wears a 1950s-style nightgown with her face covered by a white mask. The expressionless mask suggests that the subject hides her true feelings, while its starkness invites viewers to project their expectations and desires onto her.

One particularly striking photograph shows Miller holding up a looking glass, implying that she does not recognise herself in her own eyes. The point-of-view perspective places viewers in the position of the subject, encouraging reflection on our own metaphorical masks and questioning our true identities. Throughout the series, the masked woman appears markedly alone, yet her mask remains in place. This detail conveys her loss of identity, suggesting that even in solitude, she lacks a distinct persona.

Miller's series Eye of the Beholder explores the turmoil of ageing as a woman in a superficial society. The images vividly portray the pressure women face to be sexually appealing. This is especially evident in a photograph of Miller's subject balancing a tray on her knee, fork in one hand and smeared lipstick in the centre of the plate. This visual serves as a powerful signifier of the beauty industry’s impact on women’s mental health and the toxicity surrounding diet culture in the unattainable quest for perfection.

Analysing Miller's work reveals recurring visual motifs and themes. A powerful example is her use of the looking glass. Not only does this symbolise vanity and self-obsession, but it also serves as a signifier of introspection and self-consciousness. In her Eye of the Beholder series, one particularly disturbing image shows the subject smiling with a mouthful of teeth covered in the lipstick eaten in the previous photo. The red tint of the lipstick resembles blood, giving her an almost zombified appearance and linking her quest for perfection to themes of destruction and death.

Miller’s vintage aesthetic is prominent in her series titled Alarm Call. Like Eyes Without a Face, this series is set in the 1950s and focuses on a woman engaged in household chores. Miller often combines the mundane with the macabre, evident in the images of the subject lying on the sofa with a knife, talking to herself, and even hanging from the ceiling. The collection starkly portrays the detrimental effects of being confined to housewifery, and the claustrophobia that ensues.

In true Miller style, this series explores the concept of duality, highlighting the disparity between one’s public persona and private self. In addition to lying on the sofa with a maniacal grin and a knife, the subject is also depicted as solemn and aimless. This duality emphasises her lack of purpose and underscores her loneliness. The depiction of her in various frames suggests that her life revolved around maintaining the household while also revealing an inner torment that she is forced to conceal.

Miller’s cinematic style establishes her as an auteur. She pays homage to Wim Wenders’ 1984 film Paris, Texas in her series of the same name. The subject, a Natassja Kinski lookalike, wears the iconic pink jumper dress from the film. Aware of being watched, she suggestively gazes into the camera lens and poses to highlight her best angles. This woman embodies the role of seductress, fully aware of how to play it. A copy of Who Killed Marilyn? is strategically placed in the frame, aligning Miller’s model with the alluring yet tragic persona of Marilyn Monroe.

Unlike the masked lady in her Eyes Without a Face series, the viewer is set at a distance from Miller’s Paris, Texas model. While the point-of-view perspective in her Eyes Without a Face photograph places us in the position of the masked woman, we are never granted access to the intimate inner world of the lady in the pink jumper. She either poses suggestively for the camera, fully aware that she is being watched, or she is absent from the frame altogether. In this way, Miller objectifies her, presenting her as an object of desire rather than inviting a psychological understanding, as we are encouraged to do with her other female subjects.

Miller’s photography confronts and challenges the pressures and expectations placed on women in society. The Parisian artist engages with the trope famously coined by Laura Mulvey as ‘the male gaze’. Through this lens, women who are sexually appealing are often not afforded the same psychological depth as those who do not fulfil this role. Miller effectively exposes the psychological impact of societal constraints on women through haunting, unsettling, and visually arresting imagery.