Dorothy Bohm

Dorothy Bohm (22 June 1924 – 15 March 2023) was a Russian-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).

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.

Bohm's husband worked for a petrochemical company that obliged him to move around the world. She lived in Hampstead from 1956.

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 and Enzo Ragazzini, 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. She was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in November 2009.

Bohm had two daughters, one of whom, Monica Bohm-Duchen, is an art historian and curator.

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.

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 colour 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. 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. 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, Norwich 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. 2007 How We Are: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, London.

Permanent collections Victoria and Albert Museum (London) Tate (London and elsewhere) Musée Carnavalet (Paris)