Lee Miller’s life was as extraordinary as her photos. A Twenties fashion model who became a Surrealist and later the only female combat photographer in Europe during the war, she documented the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. She later married the Surrealist artist Roland Penrose, but became an alcoholic, depressive and sometimes spitefully cruel mother.

Her only child, Antony Penrose, grew up knowing nothing of his mother’s work as a photographer and war correspondent. It was only after her death in 1977 that some 60,000 of Lee’s prints, negatives and articles for Vogue were discovered hidden in the attic of the family’s East Sussex home. It transformed Antony’s view of his mother and he has since dedicated much of his life to celebrating her achievements.

Lee was born in New York State in 1907, the daughter of an engineer and amateur photographer, Theodore Miller. Aged seven, she was raped and infected with gonorrhoea, probably by a family friend. Lee kept the abuse secret, and Antony only learnt of it after her death. “When I told my father, it was an incredibly touching moment. He said, 'I wish we’d known – it would have enabled us to understand.’ ”