Dorothy Bohm: Photographer

Dorothy Bohm was born into a Jewish family living in Königsberg, East Prussia (today Kaliningrad in Russia) in 1924. In 1932, prompted by the rise of Nazism, her father moved his business and family to Memel (now Klaipeda) in Lithuania. In June 1939, she was sent away to the safety of England.

She attended a small school in Sussex, and after matriculating just a year later, studied photography at Manchester College of Technology between 1940 and 1942. After marrying fellow refugee, Polish-born Louis Bohm, Dorothy opened ‘Studio Alexander’ in Manchester’s Market Street in 1946 and relied on portraiture to earn a living both for herself and her husband, while he finished his PhD.

In 1947, Dorothy and Louis visited the artists’ colony of Ascona in Switzerland, where she discovered the pleasures and challenges of working outside the studio. Over the following years, though settling in London, they travelled extensively. They lived in Paris in 1954-5, and in New York and San Francisco in 1956, also visiting Texas, Louisiana and Mexico, where she experimented briefly with Agfa colour film but otherwise continued to work in black & white. On their return to England, the couple settled in Hampstead, north London and in 1958 Dorothy sold Studio Alexander, abandoning studio portraiture for good.

Her daughters Monica and Yvonne were born in 1957 and 1960, respectively. In the late 1950s Dorothy discovered that her parents and younger sister had survived the war in Siberian labour camps and were now living in Riga, Latvia. In 1963 her parents were given permission to move to England.

In 1969 Dorothy held her first exhibition (at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts); in 1970 she published her first book, A World Observed and in 1971 was closely involved with the founding of The Photographers’ Gallery in London, of which she became the Associate Director for fifteen years.

In 1980, following a visit to André Kertész in New York and inspired by his fascination with the Polaroid medium, Dorothy started taking pictures in this format, thus beginning her own transition from black & white to colour photography. While visiting several countries in Asia, she found that colour gave her “a new life in photography” and, from 1984 onwards, she worked exclusively in colour.

Over the following decades, whether in London or abroad, Dorothy continued to photograph, always true to her own vision of the world. Over twenty books of her work have been published; her work has been exhibited widely and is held in numerous public and private collections. In 2009, she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the UK Royal Photographic Society. Although she stopped taking pictures in 2017, she remained passionately engaged with photography until her death in March 2023.

Solo Exhibitions
 
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
1975   Exhibition of London photographs at Il Diaframma Gallery, Milan
1976   Impressions of South Africa, at The Photographers’ Gallery, London 
1981   A Sense of Place, retrospective exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, London
1984   Exhibition of Polaroid images at Mayfair Gallery, London
1986   Retrospective at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (mostly vintage black & white images, and first exhibition of colour work)
1994   Dorothy Bohm: Colour Photography 1984-94, The Photographers’ Gallery, London
1997   Exhibition of photographs from Sixties London (Lund Humphries,1996) at the Museum of London
1998   Walls and Windows, exhibition of colour photographs 1994–98 at Royal Photographic Society, Bath and Royal National Theatre, London
1999   Retrospective at Focus Gallery, London
2000   Exhibition of selection of images from Inside London book at Focus Gallery
2002   Exhibition of Hungarian images at Hungarian Cultural Institute, London
2002   Exhibition of images from Breaks in Communications book at Victoria & Albert Museum and at Focus Gallery
2002–3 Exhibition of Hampstead images at Hampstead Museum, London
2005   Major retrospective of Paris photographs (1947–present) at Musée Carnavalet, Paris
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, Corman Arts, London
2012   Women and Children First, Dimbola Museum and Galleries, Isle of Wight (Julia Margaret Cameron Trust)
2012   Seeing and Feeling, Margaret Street Gallery, London
2012   Women in Focus: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Museum of London
2013  Sixties London, Proud Gallery, Chelsea
2014  In Hampstead: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm 1994-2014, Burgh House & Hampstead Museum, London
2018   Sussex Days: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
2018-19   Little Happenings: Photographs of Children by Dorothy Bohm, V&A Museum of Childhood, London
2019   Dorothy Bohm: Colour Photographs, Avivson Gallery, London
2022   Mexico 1950s-1970s, Somers Gallery, London
2022   A World Observed: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Kaunas Photography Gallery, Kaunas, Lithuania
2023   Tour of A World Observed: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm to Latvian Museum of Photography, Riga and to Jewish Cultural Festival ‘Shalom in All the World’, Klaipeda
2023   London Street Markets, Centre for British Photography, London
2024   About Women: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Burgh House & Hampstead Museum, London
2024   Exhibition in Print Sales Gallery, Photographers’ Gallery, London
 
Group Exhibitions (selected)
 
1978   Paris Seen, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield
1989   City Lights, Goldsmiths’ College, London, subsequently toured by the South Bank Centre, London
1989   Through the Looking Glass: Photographic Art in Britain 1945–1989, Barbican Art Gallery, London
2006   La Photographie humaniste 1945–1968, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Site Richelieu, Paris
2007   Inclusion of early studio portraits in How We Are: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain
2011    Another London, Tate Britain
2013   Torn poster images included in Photo50, London Art Fair, Islington
2015   Out of Chaos – Ben Uri:100 Years in London, Somerset House, London
2016   Unseen: London, Paris, New York: Photographs by Wolfgang Suschitzky, Dorothy Bohm and Neil Libbert 1930s-1960s, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, London
2022   Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood and Water, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK
 

Dorothy Bohm: A World Observed, Hugh Evelyn, London, 1970 (foreword by Roland Penrose)
Dorothy Bohm and Ian Norrie, Hampstead: London Hill Town, Wildwood House, London, 1981
Ian Norrie and Dorothy Bohm, A Celebration of London, Walks Around the Capital, Andre Deutsch, London, 1984
Dorothy Bohm Photographs, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1986 (text by Nissan Perez)
Dorothy Bohm, Egypt, Thames and Hudson, London, 1989 (foreword by Lawrence Durrell & essay by Ian Jeffrey)
Dorothy Bohm, Venice, Thames and Hudson, London, 1992 (text by Ian Jeffrey)
Dorothy Bohm: Colour Photography 1984-94, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 1994 (text by Ian Jeffrey)
Dorothy Bohm, Sixties London, Lund Humphries Publishers/ The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 1996 (texts by Amanda Hopkinson & Ian Jeffrey)
Dorothy Bohm, Walls and Windows, Lund Humphries Publishers, London/ The Royal Photographic Society, Bath, 1998 (texts by Mark Haworth-Booth & Monica Bohm-Duchen)
Dorothy Bohm, Inside London, Lund Humphries Publishers/ The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 2000 (texts by Martin Harrison & Jessica Duchen)
Dorothy Bohm, Breaks in Communication, Steidl, Göttingen, [Germany], 2002 (text by Martin Harrison)
Un Amour de Paris: photographs by/photographies de Dorothy Bohm, Paris Musées, 2005 (texts by Mark Haworth-Booth, Lynne Woolfson & Françoise Reynaud)
Ambiguous Realities: Colour Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Ben Uri Gallery, London, 2007 (text by Monica Bohm-Duchen)
A World Observed 1940-2010: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Philip Wilson, 2010 (texts by Colin Ford, Ian Jeffrey & Monica Bohm-Duchen)
About Women: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Dewi Lewis, 2015 (texts by Marika Cobbold & Amanda Hopkinson)
Unseen: London, Paris, New York: Photographs by Wolfgang Suschitzky, Dorothy Bohm and Neil Libbert 1930s-1960s, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, London, 2016 (texts by Katy Barron, Michael Berkowitz, Zelda Cheatle, Jessica Feather & Saskia Rubin)
London Street Markets 1960s-1970s and Sussex 1960s-1980s, Café Royal Books, 2020
Paris 1950s-1970s and New York 1950s-1970s, Café Royal Books, 2021
Mexico 1950s-1970s, Café Royal Books, 2022
Dorothy Bohm: A World Observed/Regėtas Pasaulis, Kaunas Photography Gallery, 2023 (in Lithuanian & English)
Dorothy Bohm at 100, Beam Editions, 2024 (texts by Martin Barnes, Maria Balshaw, Don McCullin, Marina Warner et alia)