Renee Salt, 93, an Auschwitz survivor, at the Seeing Auschwitz exhibition. Photograph: PR

Images that influenced how people perceived the Nazi death camps were taken, according to a curator.

Images of terror may be seen in the blazing chimneys of the crematoriums where their corpses were burnt, the masses of terrified individuals holding their children or few goods, and the gates of the most notorious of the Nazi extermination camps.

The people who committed the Holocaust were the ones who took the pictures that have changed how people see Auschwitz. They are the evidence of a task being completed: the killing of almost a million people.

This is the subject of a brand-new exhibition called Seeing Auschwitz, which debuts in London on Thursday. According to Paul Salmons, the project's principal curator, "These photographs are not at all neutral sources; we are looking at a piece of reality but seen from the Nazi perspective."

“It is necessary to stop and analyse them to really see what each image truly reveals, not only about the place and the moment, but also about their authors, the people portrayed, and even about ourselves as viewers.”

The images are from a collection that was uncovered by a Holocaust survivor after World War II. The Auschwitz Album comprised 193 pictures showing how individuals arrived at the concentration camp and were chosen to go into the gas chambers.

Approximately 400,000 individuals, virtually all of them were Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz during the three-month period in 1944, when the photos were shot. There were 1.1 million homicides in all. A noteworthy historical source that has dominated our knowledge of the location is the album. But it's also a major concern," said Salmons.

Ernst Hofmann and Bernhard Walter, two photographers who were almost certainly SS members, were upfront about their work. They sometimes stood on high surfaces, like the top of a train, to get better angles and composition.

“There’s nothing clandestine about these images” said Salmans. “What we’re seeing in these images is the gaze of the killer. When we see people arriving or being sorted, what we’re seeing is what they want us to see – an efficient process, something they’re proud of.”

To "rehumanize" the victims of the Nazis' dehumanization, some elements have been accentuated in the show. A little kid is staring directly into the camera as a lady and a boy are holding hands close to her.

“If we look more closely at what, for [the photographer], are faceless crowds, we can pick out individuals, we can try to rehumanise, we can look at the interactions happening between, for example, one of the inmates and the one of the new arrivals,” said Salmans. “We know that prisoners sometimes whispered hurried advice even though it was at great risk. Very often, our eye passes over these sorts of details. So in a sense, I guess this exhibition is very much about a closer look.”

Four blurry pictures shot at great danger by members of the Sonderkommando (Special Squad), a squad of convicts forced by the SS to empty the gas chambers of corpses, remove their gold teeth, and feed the bodies into the crematoriums, are juxtaposed with the images from the Auschwitz Album.

Additionally, there are drawings that were concealed within a bottle and created by a prisoner only known as MM. They show the harshness of the guards as well as the suffering of families who had relatives taken to the gas chambers or separated from them.

To the age of 15, Renee Salt, now 93, and her parents arrived at the camp. In the crowd, she lost sight of her father, who she never saw again. She and her mother made it through Auschwitz, working as slaves on the Hamburg docks, and another death camp, Bergen-Belsen, in northern Germany. Twelve days after the British army liberated it, her mother passed away.

She said that seeing the exhibit's photographs left her "broken-hearted." Every time you witness these images, the agony "never leaves you, but it hits you every time"

For 50 years, she refrained from discussing her experiences, but in recent decades, she has repeated her tale hundreds of times. She said that "maybe we can prevent another Holocaust happening if people know the truth."

Until the end of December, visitors may see Auschwitz at 81 Old Brompton Road in London, SW7 3LD.

Thanks to Harriet Sherwood at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.