Dorothy Bohm

Dorothy Bohm (22 June 1924 – 15 March 2023) was a German-born British photographer based in London, known for her portraiture, street photography, early adoption of colour, and photography of London and Paris; she is considered one of the doyennes of British photography.

Life and career

Bohm was born Dorothea Israelit in June 1924 in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), to a German-speaking family of Jewish-Lithuanian origins. From 1932 to 1939 she lived with her family in Lithuania, first in Memel (now Klaipėda) and later in Šiauliai. She was sent to England in 1939 to escape Nazism: first to a boarding school in Ditchling, Sussex, but soon to Manchester, where her brother was a student, and where she met Louis Bohm (whom she would marry in 1945).Dorothy Bohm,
Manchester Memoir
(2007), Manchester Art Gallery. Accessed 1 July 2012.Press dossier
(PDF) for the exhibition ''Un Amour de Paris'', Musée Carnavalet, 2005. Accessed 1 July 2012.

Bohm studied photography at the Manchester Municipal College of Technology, from which she received a diploma; she also received a certificate in photography from City and Guilds. She had worked under the photographer Samuel Cooper for four years until she set up her own portrait studio, Studio Alexander, in 1946 using her ''nom de guerre'' Dorothy Alexander. (She would sell the studio in 1958.) Samples from this early portrait work would be exhibited decades later.Val Williams and Susan Bright, eds, ''How We Are: Photographing Britain from the 1840s to the Present'' (London: Tate Publishing, 2007; ), pp. 106, 107, 229.

Bohm's husband worked for a petrochemical company that obliged him to move around the world. In 1947 she made the first of several visits to Paris, where she lived with her husband from 1954 to 1955. In the 1950s she also lived in New York and San Francisco, in 1956 travelling to Mexico, where she photographed in colour for the first time.Exhibition notice
for ''A World Observed 1940–2010'', Manchester Art Gallery, 1 March 2010. Accessed 1 July 2012. She has lived in Hampstead since 1956.

By the late 1950s, Bohm had abandoned studio portraiture in favour of street photography, but was still working predominantly in black and white; in 1980 she was persuaded by André Kertész to experiment with colour, which she did for two years using a Polaroid SX-70 instant camera. She used colour negative film from 1984, and from 1985 worked exclusively in colour.

This early work of Bohm's has been described by Monica Bohm-Duchen as "humanist street photography, capturing the moment in the manner of Henri Cartier-Bresson" whilst "people are often surprised by the youth and vibrancy of her colour work. She focuses on fragments of the urban landscape ... that are otherwise overlooked. These photographs have an abstract quality; there's a deliberate spatial ambiguity and you're not quite sure what you're looking at. But nothing is manipulated – she will still only work with film."

A major 1969 exhibition in the Institute of Contemporary Arts titled ''Spectrum'' and consisting of a main exhibition called ''Woman'' and four smaller exhibitions showing photography by Bohm, Don McCullin, Tony Ray-Jones an
Enzo Ragazzini
and drew a public response that encouraged one of its organizers, Sue Davies, to embark on founding the UK's first photography gallery, The Photographers' Gallery which opened in 1971. Bohm's show was titled ''People at Peace'' and she said "''I photograph the humble, the anonymous - those who are spontaneous and mirror all of us''". Bohm was later described as the Gallery's Associate Director.

Bohm visited South Africa for five weeks in 1974, later exhibiting photographs taken there at the Photographers' Gallery in April 1975. With Helena Kovac, she also founded the Focus Gallery for Photography in 1998; the gallery closed in 2004.Diane Smyth,
The life and work of Dorothy Bohm
", ''British Journal of Photography,'' 7 April 2010. Accessed 1 July 2012. She was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in November 2009.

Bohm had two daughters,https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/dorothy-bohm-interview-91-year-old-photographer-on-portraying-humanity-and-hope-after-escaping-the-10367646.htm Dorothy Bohm interview: 91-year-old photographer on portraying humanity and hope after escaping the Nazis as a teenager one of whom, Monica Bohm-Duchen, is an art historian and curator.https://news.artnet.com/art-world/how-mondrian-and-many-unsung-refugee-artists-enriched-modern-britain-1305629 A New Festival Looks at How Artists Fleeing Nazism Enriched Modern Britain

Bohm said about her work:

The photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing. It makes transience less painful and retains something of the special magic, which I have looked for and found. I have tried to create order out of chaos, to find stability in flux and beauty in the most unlikely places.

Bohm died in London on 15 March 2023, at the age of 98.

Publications

*Dorothy Bohm. ''A World Observed''. London: Hugh Evelyn, 1970. With Introduction by Roland Penrose.
*Dorothy Bohm and Ian Norrie. ''Hampstead: London Hill Town''. London: Wildwood House, 1981. .
*Ian Norrie and Dorothy Bohm. ''A Celebration of London, Walks around the Capital''. London: André Deutsch, 1984. .
**''Walks around London: A Celebration of the Capital.'' London: André Deutsch, 1986. .
*''Dorothy Bohm Photographs''. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1986. Text by Nissan Perez. . Only black and white images of an exhibition that had included both black and white and color images.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Egypt''. London: Thames & Hudson, 1989. . With foreword by Lawrence Durrell and text by Ian Jeffrey.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Venice''. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992. . Text by Ian Jeffrey.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Colour Photography 1984–94''. London: The Photographers' Gallery, 1994. . Text by Ian Jeffrey.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Sixties London''. London: Lund Humphries / The Photographers' Gallery, 1996. . Texts by Amanda Hopkinson and Ian Jeffrey.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Walls and Windows''. London: Lund Humphries; Bath: The Royal Photographic Society, 1998. . Texts by Mark Haworth-Booth and Monica Bohm-Duchen.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Inside London''. London: Lund Humphries / The Photographers' Gallery, 2000. . Texts by Martin Harrison and Jessica Duchen.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Breaks in Communication''. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. . Text by Martin Harrison.
*Mátyás Sárközy and Dorothy Bohm. ''Albion köd nélkül.'' Pécs: Jelenkor Kiadó, 2004. .
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Un Amour de Paris''. Paris: Paris Musées, 2005. . Texts by Mark Haworth-Booth, Lynne Woolfson and Françoise Reynaud.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Ambiguous Realities by Dorothy Bohm''. Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2007. .
*Dorothy Bohm. ''Ambiguous Realities: Colour Photographs by Dorothy Bohm''. London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2007. . Text by Monica Bohm-Duchen.
*David Hawkins, ed. ''A World Observed, 1940–2010: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm.'' London: Philip Wilson; Manchester: Manchester Art Gallery, 2010. , . Texts by Monica Bohm-Duchen, Colin Ford, and Ian Jeffrey.
*Dorothy Bohm. ''About Women.'' Stockport, Cheshire: Dewi Lewis, 2016. .

Exhibitions

Solo

*1969 ''People at Peace'', part of ''Four Photographers in Contrast'' (with Don McCullin, Tony Ray-Jones and Enzo Ragazzini) at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
*1976 Exhibition of London photographs at ll Diaframma Gallery, Milan. A smaller version of this exhibition was also shown at the Marjorie Neikrug gallery in New York.
*1976 ''Impressions of South Africa'', at The Photographers' Gallery, London.
*1981 ''A Sense of Place'', retrospective exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre, London.
*1984 Exhibition of Polaroid images of London at the Contrast Gallery, London.
*1986 Retrospective at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, with a catalogue published by the Museum.
*1994 ''Dorothy Bohm: Colour Photography 1984–94,'' The Photographers' Gallery, London, with catalogue published by the Gallery.
*1997 Exhibition of photographs from ''Sixties London'' at Museum of London.
*1998 ''Walls and Windows'', exhibition of colour photographs 1994–1998 at Royal Photographic Society, Bath and Royal National Theatre, London, with accompanying book published by Lund Humphries.
*1998 Exhibition of still-life images at Artmonsky Arts, London.
*1999 Retrospective at Focus Gallery (London).
*1999 ''Colour Photographs'' at Focus Gallery (London).
*2002 Exhibition of Hungarian images at Hungarian Cultural Institute, London.
*2002 Exhibition of large colour photographs from ''Breaks in Communication'' at Victoria and Albert Museum and Focus Gallery, London.
*2003 Exhibition of Hampstead images at Hampstead Museum, London.
*2005 Photographs of Mexico at The Photographers' Gallery, London.
*2005 ''Un Amour de Paris'', major retrospective of Paris photographs 1947–2003, Musée Carnavalet, Paris,Jeanne Dréan,
Dorothy Bohm, cinquante ans de flamme déclarée à la capitale
, ''20 Minutes,'' 4 March 2006. Accessed 1 July 2012. accompanied by catalogue in English and French published by Paris Musées.
*2005 Exhibition of vintage black and white images of London and Paris, The Photographers' Gallery, London.
*2006 Smaller version of Musée Carnavalet Paris exhibition shown at Das Verborgene Museum, Berlin
*2007 ''Ambiguous Realities: Colour Photographs by Dorothy Bohm'', exhibition at Ben Uri Gallery, London
*2007 ''Israel in Black and White: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm'', exhibition at Corman Arts, London
*2010 ''A World Observed 1940–2010'', a major retrospective, Manchester City Art Gallery. 24 April – 30 August.
*2010 ''Dorothy Bohm Vintage Photographs'', exhibition at Zoe Bingham Fine Art, London.
*2011 ''A World Observed 1940–2010'', a major retrospective, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, NorwichExhibition notice
for "A World Observed", Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, 2011. Accessed 30 June 2012.
*2012 ''Seeing and Feeling'', Margaret Street Gallery, London
*2016 ''Sixties London'', Jewish Museum, London
*2018–19 ''Little Happenings: Photographs of Children'', V&A Museum of Childhood, London
May & June 2019 – Colour Photographs by Dorothy Bohm and AVIVSON GALLERY IN HIGHGATE, LONDON

Group

*1978 ''Paris Seen'', Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield.
*1989 ''City Lights'', Goldsmiths' College, London
*2003 ''London Cultural Capital'', The Photographers' Gallery, London
*2007 ''How We Are: Photographing Britain'', Tate Britain, London.
*2012 ''Another London: International Photographers Capture City Life 1930–1980'', Tate Britain, London

Permanent collections

*Victoria and Albert Museum (London)
*Tate (London and elsewhere)Olivier Laurent,
Tate doubles its photography collection after donation
", ''British Journal of Photography,'' 2 May 2012. Accessed 1 July 2012.
*Musée Carnavalet (Paris)

References

External links

*
*Jennifer Boyd,
Dorothy Bohm in Manchester
, Manchester Art Gallery.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bohm, Dorothy
1924 births
2023 deaths
Artists from Königsberg
English women photographers
British portrait photographers
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom
Photographers from London
Alumni of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
German people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
People from Klaipėda
People from Šiauliai
Jewish artists