Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Dorothy Bohm photographer

Dorothy Bohm (née Dorothea Israelit) was born to a prosperous Jewish family in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1924. In June 1939 Bohm's parents sent her to England to escape the Nazi regime. Gifted a camera by her father on her departure, Bohm became a highly influential and widely exhibited portrait and street photographer; in 1971, she was closely involved with the founding of The Photographers’ Gallery in London, the first gallery dedicated solely to the medium in the UK.

Born: 1924 Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia)

Died: 2023 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Other name/s: Dorothea Israelit, Dorothy Alexander


Biography

Photographer Dorothy Bohm (née Dorothea Israelit) was born into a German-speaking family of Jewish-Lithuanian origin in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia) on 22 May 1924. In 1932, to escape rising Nazism, the family settled in Memel (now Klaipeda, Lithuania), before fleeing again in March 1939 to Šiauliai, Lithuania. In June 1939 Bohm's parents sent her to England for safety, and upon departure, her father gifted her his precious Leica camera. She attended a small school in Ditchling, Sussex before enrolling in 1940 on a vocational photographic course at the Manchester College of Technology, where her brother Igor was also a student, and where she met her future husband, Polish-Jewish chemistry student Louis Bohm. There her talent was quickly recognised and, upon the completion of her studies, she was awarded a prize for portraiture and invited to teach evening classes at the college. Afterwards, she worked as an assistant at Samuel Cooper’s portrait photography studio in Manchester (1942–45) and made a significant contribution to the British war effort giving talks (under the pseudonym Dorothy Alexander to hide her Jewishness) on ‘Europe under the Nazis’ at factories, church halls, and libraries on behalf of the Ministry of Information; on D-Day, she gave a lecture to the American Air Force in Blackpool. During this period, she met artist Marie Riefstahl-Nordlinger, a pivotal figure in the Manchester Arts and Crafts Movement and former friend of Marcel Proust, whose ‘account of Proustian Paris’, Bohm later recalled, ‘fired my imagination, made me want to learn, study, observe, travel, especially in France and Italy’ (cited Barron, 2016). Following her marriage in November 1945, Bohm established her own portrait studio – Studio Alexander – at 28–30 Market Street, Manchester.

In 1947 the Bohms returned to Europe for the first time since the war, discovering Ascona, a small village and artists’ colony on Lake Maggiore in the Ticino region of Switzerland, to which Dorothy repeatedly returned until the early 1950s to photograph its inhabitants and the surrounding landscape. After obtaining his doctorate in chemistry, Louis worked for a petrochemical company, initially in Manchester, before transferring to its branch in London. In 1954, the couple relocated to Paris for a year, where Dorothy became close friends with the Romanian-born painter Avigdor Arikha, who encouraged her to take her photographic work seriously. In 1956, after an extended visit to the USA, the Bohms returned to London, moving to a flat in Hampstead, north-west London. Two years later, Dorothy decided to sell her studio in order to pursue her passion for street photography. The photographs she took of London in the 1960s reflect a transformative era in the history of the capital. In 1960 she travelled to Riga, Latvia (then in the USSR) to be reunited with her mother, father, and sister, who had been imprisoned separately in Siberian labour camps in 1941. With the help of future Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson (then Leader of the Opposition), the Bohms worked tirelessly to gain permission for Dorothy’s family to join her in England, which was finally granted in 1963.

A major exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 1969 of photographs by Bohm, Don McCullin, Tony Ray-Jones, and Enzo Ragazzini drew such a positive response that one of its organisers, Sue Davies, was encouraged to establish a photography gallery in London, the first of its kind in the UK. The Photographers' Gallery opened in Covent Garden in 1971 and was 'an amazing success from the beginning' (Dorothy Bohm, The Independent, 2015). Serving as its Associate Director for the next 15 years, Bohm remained closely involved with the gallery. During this time, she continued to develop her own practice, experimenting with colour polaroid photography in the early 1980s and, in the middle of that decade, abandoning black-and-white photography completely. In due course she adopted a more abstract, spatially ambiguous, and painterly approach, evidenced in her many photographs of torn posters (some of which were included in the exhibition Ambiguous Realities: Colour Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, held at Ben Uri Gallery in 2007). Bohm was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 2009. Since 1970, more than 15 books have been published on her oeuvre. Her work has been exhibited widely and a major retrospective was held at Manchester Art Gallery in 2010, as well as two important exhibitions in 2016: Dorothy Bohm: Sixties London at the Jewish Museum London, and Unseen London, Paris, New York, 1930s–60s: Photographs by Wolfgang Suschitzky, Dorothy Bohm and Neil Libbert at Ben Uri Gallery. Dorothy Bohm died in London, England on 15 March 2023. Her work is held in many UK public collections including Ben Uri Collection, Tate and Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Related books

  • Carla Mitchell and John March eds., Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain after 1933 (London: Four Corners Gallery, 2020)
  • Katy Barron, ed., Unseen London, Paris, New York, 1930s–60s: Photographs by Wolfgang Suschitzky, Dorothy Bohm and Neil Libbert (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2016)
  • Dorothy Bohm, About Women (Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2016)
  • Michael Berkowitz, Jews and Photography in Britain (Austin: University of Texas, 2015)
  • Colin Ford, Ian Jeffrey, Monica Bohm-Duchen, A World Observed 1940–2010: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm (Manchester: Manchester Art Gallery, 2010)
  • Dorothy Bohm, Ambiguous Realities: Colour Photographs by Dorothy Bohm (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2007)
  • Amanda Hopkinson, Ian Jeffrey and Dorothy Bohm, Sixties London (London: Lund Humphries and The Photographers’ Gallery, 1996)
  • Dorothy Bohm, Colour Photography 1984–94 (London: The Photographers’ Gallery, 1994)
  • Dorothy Bohm, Venice (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992)
  • Dorothy Bohm, Egypt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989)
  • Dorothy Bohm, A World Observed (London: Hugh Evelyn, 1970)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Camden Art Centre, London (trustee)
  • City and Guilds College, London (student)
  • Manchester College of Technology (student)
  • Royal Photographic Society (honorary fellow)
  • The Photographers' Gallery, London (co-founder and associate director)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain after 1933, Four Corners Gallery (2020)
  • Dorothy Bohm: Colour Photographs, Avivson Gallery, London (2019)
  • Dorothy Bohm: Sussex Photography, Pallant House Gallery (2018)
  • Little Happenings: Photographs of Children, V&A Museum of Childhood (2018)
  • Dorothy Bohm: Sixties London, Jewish Museum (2016)
  • Unseen London, Paris, New York, 1930s–60s: Photographs by Wolfgang Suschitzky, Dorothy Bohm and Neil Libbert, Ben Uri Gallery (2016)
  • In Hampstead: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm 1994–2014, Museum of Hampstead, Burgh House, London (2014)
  • Another London: International Photographers Capture City Life 1930–1980, Tate Britain (2012)
  • Women and Children First, Dimbola Lodge, Isle of Wight, Julia Margaret Cameron Trust (2012)
  • Women in Focus: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Museum of London (2012)
  • Summer in the City: Contemporary Responses, Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art (2011)
  • A World Observed 1940–2010: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Manchester Art Gallery (2010)
  • Ambiguous Realities: Colour Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art (2007)
  • Un Amour de Paris, Paris photographs 1947–2003, Musée Carnavalet, Paris (2005)
  • Exhibition of vintage black and white images of London and Paris, The Photographers' Gallery, London (2005)
  • Exhibition of Hampstead images at Hampstead Museum, London (2003)
  • Exhibition of Hungarian images at Hungarian Cultural Institute, London (2002)
  • Breaks in Communication at Victoria and Albert Museum & Focus Gallery, London (2002)
  • Walls and Windows, colour photographs 1994–1998, Royal Photographic Society, Bath and Royal National Theatre, London (1998)
  • Sixties London, Museum of London (1997)
  • Dorothy Bohm: Colour Photography 1984–94, The Photographers' Gallery, London (1994)
  • Through the Looking Glass: Photographic Art in Britain 1945–1989, Barbican Art Gallery, London (1989)
  • Retrospective, Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1986)
  • A Sense of Place, retrospective exhibition Camden Arts Centre, London (1981)
  • Impressions of South Africa, The Photographers' Gallery, London (1976)
  • People at Peace, Four Photographers in Contrast (with Don McCullin, Tony Ray-Jones and Enzo Ragazzini), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1969)
  Dorothy Bohm
   
Ben Uri collection

Dorothy Bohm in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Dorothy Bohm]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Dorothy Bohm] in the Ben Uri Library