documenting Black quotidian life through photography and making images since childhood, Miller is self-taught. Her intentional transition to photography didn’t begin until graduate school at Pratt, ignited by the use of her camera for a school project. Miller began teaching herself everything about photography. Because of her passion for advocacy planning in neighborhood revitalization, community and economic development, she continued to work in the field for nearly 20 years, a City Planner by day and navigating her photographic journey on nights and weekends. As a single mother of a teenaged son and homeowner, there was no option to go back to school for photography or to be a starving artist without a job.

In the mid-eighties she worked for New York City’s housing agency, The Department of Housing, Preservation and Development, where she served as Assistant to the Bureau Chief, and managed and administered Community Consultant Contracts, that provided a major source of funding for community based non-profits in housing development and neighborhood revitalization.

In the late eighties through the mid-nineties, she went on to become Executive Director of two community development organizations, Jamaica Apartment Improvement Program in South Jamaica, Queens and Bushwick Improvement Coordinating Action Committee in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She was charged with creating these pilot programs focused on mitigating multifamily housing vacancies, drug infestation, and the physical, economic and social development of homeless housing for families, respectively. Miller was immersed in organizing, and activism in both communities. Being in community informed and heightened her perspective, enabling her to better capture the human experience visually.

After making the hard decision to walk away from City Planning to pursue photography full time, Miller literally walked into a small photography studio on Jamaica Avenue in Queens and asked for a job. She got one…stuffing envelopes with negatives and a promise from the owner that he didn’t have time to teach her anything. Luckily, there was an assistant in the studio darkroom, where all of what she learned would change her life forever: black and white film development, photographic printing and how to run a darkroom for a photography studio. Miller also honed her skills by working as an photography/darkroom assistant for two other photographers.

Working primarily with natural light on film, she strives to capture/create the visual simplicity of her subjects by emphasizing the contrast between highlights and shadows. She studies the human condition from a visual perspective and has developed a powerful eye for images that display the true kaleidoscope of experiences in African American culture. Miller was first asked to exhibit her work in 1988. Since then her work has been exhibited widely in galleries, museums and various art institutions.

In 1998, Miller made her curatorial debut at the Rush Fine Arts Gallery in New York, NY. The exhibition was entitled Gyration, a photographic tribute to dance by Sistagraphy, an organization of women photographers from around the country.

Her images have been published in ReFraming: Reflections in Black, Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers, FREEDOM: A Photographic History of the African American Struggle, Reflections In Black- A History of Black Photographers 1840-Present, A History of New York In Images – CITYSCAPES, Black: A Celebration of A Culture, Long Shot, and Black New York Photographers of the 20th Century. Miller’s work has been the subject of several newspaper and magazine articles and reviews. Her images can also be found in the permanent collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Brooklyn Museum and Museum of the City of New York.

In 1999, she was an Adjunct Lecturer at The Tisch Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University in New York, an Adjunct Lecturer at The City University of New York (York College) and taught photography and art in New York City’s public school system.

Currently, Miller is working on a book project, If We Stand Tall…Recollections of Spirits Past, a study of a community, all communities, specifically her community- Jamaica, New York. A deeply moving and important memoir that captures the very essence of life, in a celebration of our ancestors, community and our connection to all others.

She has been awarded the 2023 Scholarship to attend the La Luz Workshop, Publish Your Photography Book. Miller is also currently Beacon Gallery’s (Boston) 2023 Artist In Residence.