Elizabeth Lee Miller is often discussed in relation to the Surrealist photographer Man Ray, with whom she was romantically involved. Their relationship is important – not least as Lee rediscovered the solarisation technique and enabled some of Man Ray’s greatest images. But Miller is important in her own right as a photographer, not just a muse, and as the creator of some outstanding snapshots of France, such as this image. 

It’s in black and white and so the snow, rather than gleam and sparkle, is dulled – but then that’s what snow is like when it falls in the city. We trudge through it, cars trundle through it – snow is rarely white in the modern age. The stark contrast between the lonely silhouette of a man and the white expanse is ominously reminiscent of the art of the Romantic era, when no good ever came from a shadowy suited figure in the distance. The statues on the building look towards the centre as if to mirror this anxiety. Or perhaps they, like the shadowy man, are focused on the Eiffel Tower. Indeed, the great symbol of Paris, obstructed by the snowy mist, gives us hope and reminds us too to look ahead; a message all the more potent in recent times.