Dorothy Bohm’s observant, empathetic images give an insight into women’s everyday lives over her seven-decade career, writes
Until 15 December 2024.
Burgh House, New End Square, London NW3 1LT
Dorothy Bohm (1924-2023) had a gentle, understated photographic style but in her own quiet way was a pioneer of photography. Born in what was then eastern Prussia, she arrived in the UK as a refugee from Nazism at the age of 15. Drawn to photography as a teenager, she began by working as a studio portrait photographer before setting up her own business in 1946.
However, she far preferred the spontaneity of working outside to the formal and controlled environment of a studio, and after her husband Louis established a successful business, she was able to pursue the work she wanted. She was happiest when photographing people in their everyday lives, as she said, ‘photographing what I saw’, in sometimes informally posed but more often candid images.
From the late 1960s, her work was exhibited in major galleries including the Victoria & Albert Museum and she herself was involved in the founding of the Photographers’ Gallery. She was an Associate Director of the gallery for 15 years.
This exhibition occupies two rooms and a hallway in the peaceful and elegant surroundings of the 18th-century Burgh House in Hampstead, the part of London in which she lived from the 1950s onwards. It shows a wide range of her photos of women, taken both in the UK and on her worldwide travels over her seven-decade career.
Bohm said that women were a natural subject for her, ‘because women often express more in their faces, and are less inhibited in showing emotion’, but also because ‘women are less threatened by a woman, so it is easier for me to approach them without seeming intimidating. I can win their trust, move closer.’
The women in her images are shown in their ever-evolving role in society, on streets, in pubs and shops, sometimes at work but more often at leisure. Frequently, they are shown at moments when their social mask slips and their real feelings are on display. These often wry, observant photographs are never critical of their subjects, but instead display warmth, empathy and affection for them. This exhibition represents only a fraction of Dorothy Bohm’s vast output as a photographer, but it captures the essence of her work.
Prospect Cottage: Derek Jarman’s House by Gilbert McCarragher
£25, Thames & Hudson, hardback, 192
