When Antony Penrose first set out to write about his mother, he called his book The Lives of Lee Miller.

The title was not an overstatement. Lee Miller, born in New York State in 1907, was a Vogue cover model in the United States, then a Surrealist photographer in Paris, where she mixed with some of the world’s most famous artists. Picasso painted her six times, and she was a muse, lover and artistic collaborator of Man Ray’s.