A World Observed 1940-2010: Photographs by Dorothy BohmManchester Art Gallery, 24th April-30th August, Tel: 0161 235 8888
Surprisingly, this is photographer Dorothy Bohm’s first proper retrospective. Though not a household name, Bohm has been an influential figure in British photography for over seven decades—she founded The Photographer’s Gallery in London in 1971, was a nurturer of young talent, and last year was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
Fittingly, the show is being mounted in Manchester, the city to which the young Bohm, born into a Jewish Lithuanian family in 1924, was sent in 1939 to escape the Nazis. After graduating from Manchester College of Technology in 1942, Bohm started with portrait work, opening “Studio Alexander” in 1946 before embarking on years of travel through Europe, the US, Mexico, the USSR and Israel, where she developed her distinctive approach to the black-and-white documentary “decisive moment.”
In the early 1980s she started using Kodak colour film on a trip to the far east. Since then she has used colour exclusively, sometimes with the human scene as her focus, sometimes constructing images more abstract and allusive. “The photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing,” she has said. As photography of Bohm’s kind disappears, this exhibition, co-curated by Bohm’s daughter Monica, is both celebration and elegy.
This article originally appeared in the May 2010 edition of Prospect.
Surprisingly, this is photographer Dorothy Bohm’s first proper retrospective. Though not a household name, Bohm has been an influential figure in British photography for over seven decades—she founded The Photographer’s Gallery in London in 1971, was a nurturer of young talent, and last year was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
Fittingly, the show is being mounted in Manchester, the city to which the young Bohm, born into a Jewish Lithuanian family in 1924, was sent in 1939 to escape the Nazis. After graduating from Manchester College of Technology in 1942, Bohm started with portrait work, opening “Studio Alexander” in 1946 before embarking on years of travel through Europe, the US, Mexico, the USSR and Israel, where she developed her distinctive approach to the black-and-white documentary “decisive moment.”
In the early 1980s she started using Kodak colour film on a trip to the far east. Since then she has used colour exclusively, sometimes with the human scene as her focus, sometimes constructing images more abstract and allusive. “The photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing,” she has said. As photography of Bohm’s kind disappears, this exhibition, co-curated by Bohm’s daughter Monica, is both celebration and elegy.
This article originally appeared in the May 2010 edition of Prospect.
