Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Picasso painted her six times, and countless photographers captured her beauty on the pages of Vogue. Yet Lee Miller is best known for the pictures she took herself.

Miller (1907-77) is one of the photographers feted by some 100 Paris museums and galleries as part of the annual ``Mois de la Photo'' (``Photography Month'').

Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Miller was a model before moving to Paris. There, she became the muse of Man Ray, and learned the craft from that great avant-garde photographer, picking up techniques that came out of the surrealist toolbox.

Miller worked for fashion magazines and ad agencies, and dabbled in landscape photography. She became famous for her dreamlike pictures of the London Blitz, and for being the first professional photographer to reveal to the world the horrors of the concentration camps.

Her show at the Jeu de Paume in the Tuileries Gardens (seen last year at London's Victoria & Albert Museum) separates the concentration-camp images from the rest, and presents, not their original prints, but the pages of Vogue on which they appeared, along with Miller's highly emotional copy. As curator Mark Haworth-Booth explained to the French daily Le Monde, he didn't feel comfortable showing those pictures ``from a purely aesthetic perspective.''

``Objectivites,'' the exhibition at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, is no less impressive. It presents 20 photographers of the Dusseldorf school, whose patron saints were Bernd Becher (1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (born in 1934).

Drab Specimens

The couple began in 1959 to document the Ruhr area's factory equipment -- silos, gas meters, headgear -- and hang them in tight, symmetrical rows. Seen together, these drab specimens of a dying industrial culture have become collector's items, exuding a strange poetic melancholy.

The Bechers' followers share their documentary, serial approach, though they are very different. Thomas Struth is known for his bird's-eye views of cities; Candida Hofer, for her beautiful interiors of libraries and museums; and Andreas Gursky, for his vast panoramas of apartment blocks and crowd scenes. Gursky holds the world record for the highest-price single photograph sold at auction.

All present a universe in which humans are either absent, or mere extras in a drama with no heroes.

``Objectivites'' runs through Jan. 4. For details, see http://www.mam.paris.fr or call +33-1-5367-4000.

Opening soon is a retrospective of the works of Erich Salomon (1886-1944): Berlin's nosiest photojournalist, and a notorious gate-crasher. Aristide Briand, the French foreign minister, once joked that unless Salomon snuck into a ministerial meeting, nobody would believe it happened.

`Candid Camera'

Salomon was nicknamed ``the candid camera'' by a British magazine two decades before the launch of the popular TV series. His pictures offer an unvarnished view of political life and high society in the Weimar Republic. The show is at the Hotel de Sully (Nov. 12 to Jan. 25, 2009.)

For more information about the Miller and Salomon shows, go to http://www.jeudepaume.org. For information about shows during the Mois de la Photo, go to http://www.mep-fr.org.

(Jorg von Uthmann is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this review: Jorg von Uthmann in Paris at uthmann@wanadoo.fr.

Last Updated: November 2, 2008 19:25 EST