Lee Jeffries. The exhibition in Milan

The Carlo Maria Martini Diocesan Museum in Milan hosts, from 27 January to 16 April 2023, the solo exhibition of Lee Jeffries (Bolton, UK, 1971), the photographer who became the voice of the poor and marginalized.

Curated by Barbara Silbe and Nadia Righi, the exhibition entitled “Lee Jeffries. Portraits. L’anima oltre l’immagine" (Lee Jeffries. Portraits. The soul beyond the image) produced and organized by the Diocesan Museum of Milan, presents about fifty black and white and color images that capture the faces of that hidden and invisible humanity that populates the streets of the great metropolises of Europe and of the United States.

A self-taught photographer, Jeffries began his career almost by accident, on the day before the 2008 London marathon when he took a photograph of a young homeless girl sitting in a shop entrance; scolded for doing it without authorization, Jeffries stops to talk to her, to question her about her past, to establish a contact that went beyond simple curiosity to dig deep into the soul of the person in front of her.
Since then he began to take an interest in and document the lives of the homeless, moving from the alleys of Los Angeles to the most hidden and dangerous areas of the cities of France and Italy.
Thanks to his gaze and his spiritual art, as he himself usually defines it, Lee Jeffries brings homeless people out of the darkness in which they are imprisoned and tries to restore light and dignity to every human being.
His style is characterized by highly contrasted close-up shots and very close interactions with the subjects, men and women living on the margins of society, met on the streets of the world.
His most characteristic stylistic feature is that of the portrait, always frontal and close up, often with dark monochromatic backgrounds which, elaborated with an effective work on light and shadow, brings out the faces in their extraordinary expressive power, capable of communicating their suffering, their discomfort and their unhappy condition.