Biography

“I have tried to create order out of chaos, to find stability in flux and beauty in the most unlikely places”

1924 Born Dorothea Israelit, on 22 June in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad in Russia), into an assimilated Jewish family

1932 Family moved to Memel (now Klaipeda), Lithuania

1939 Arrived in England, and went to school in Sussex; changed her first name to Dorothy

1940 Moved to Manchester to study photography

1942 Graduated from Manchester College of Technology

Obtained City and Guilds Final Certificate in Photography

1942-45 Worked in Samuel Cooper portrait studio in central Manchester, working under name of Dorothy Alexander

1945 Married Louis Bohm

1946 Opened 'Studio Alexander' at 28-30 Market Street, Manchester

1947 Acquired British citizenship

Frequent visits (until 1952) to Ascona in the Ticino, Switzerland

1950 Moved to London, though travelled frequently to Manchester

1954-5 Lived in Paris with her husband, who worked for petrochemical company

1956 Lived in New York and San Francisco; travelled extensively in USA and Mexico

Experimented with Agfa colour film, but continued to work in black & white

On return to England, settled in Hampstead, north London

1957 Daughter Monica born

1958 Sold Manchester studio

1960 Daughter Yvonne born

First of three visits in the early 1960s to the USSR; photographed in Moscow & Leningrad

1963 Family acquired a farm in Sussex; photographed there continuously for next twenty-seven years

1969 Participated in exhibition Four Photographers in Contrast

(with Don McCullin, Tony Ray-Jones and Enzo Ragazzini), at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

1970 First book of photographs, A World Observed, with foreword by

Roland Penrose, published by Hugh Evelyn

1971 Closely involved with the founding of The Photographers' Gallery, London, and its Associate Director for next fifteen years

1974 Travelled widely in South Africa

1975 Solo exhibition of London photographs at Il Diaframma Gallery, Milan

1976 Solo exhibition, Impressions of South Africa, at The Photographers' Gallery, London

1978 Participated in Paris Seen, group exhibition at Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield

1980 BBC2 Television documentary Dorothy Bohm - Photographer

1980-82 Experimented with colour photography, using SX70 Polaroid camera

1981 Hampstead - London Hill Town published by Wildwood House/High Hill Press

A Sense of Place, retrospective exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, London

1984 A Celebration of London published by André Deutsch

Exhibition of Polaroid images at Mayfair Gallery, London

Travelled to Far East; from now on, worked exclusively in colour

1985 Visited Egypt

Start of frequent visits to Provence

1986 Major retrospective at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, with a catalogue published by the Museum; mostly vintage black & white images, and first exhibition of colour work

Second visit to Egypt

Photographed intensively in Venice (also 1987 and 1988)

1989 Participated in international group exhibition, City Lights, Goldsmiths' College, London, subsequently toured by the South Bank Centre, London

Work included in Through the Looking Glass: Photographic Art in Britain 1945-1989, Barbican Art Gallery, London

Egypt, first book of colour photographs with foreword by Lawrence Durrell,

published by Thames and Hudson

1992 Second book of colour photographs, Venice, published by Thames and Hudson

1994 Dorothy Bohm: Colour Photography 1984-94 exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery, London, with catalogue published by the Gallery

1995 Visited Prague & Budapest

In-depth interview conducted by Mark Haworth-Booth for the Oral History

of British Photography, National Sound Archive, British Library, London

1996 Sixties London: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm published by Lund Humphries

1997 Exhibition of photographs from Sixties London 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, curated by Monica Bohm-Duchen; accompanying book published by Lund Humphries

Exhibition of still life photographs at Artmonsky Arts, London

Opened Focus Gallery for Photography, Bloomsbury, London

1999 Retrospective at Focus Gallery

Visited Vilnius, Lithuania; Minsk and Vitebsk, Belarus

2000 Inside London, colour photographs taken in 1990s, published by

Lund Humphries

Exhibition of selection of images from book at Focus Gallery

2002 Exhibition of Hungarian images at Hungarian Cultural Institute, London

2002 Breaks in Communications, published by Steidl/Thames and Hudson

Exhibition of large colour images from 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. Photographs acquired for Museum's permanent collection

2006 Smaller version of Musée Carnavalet Paris exhibition shown at Das Verborgene Museum, Berlin

Work included in La Photographie humaniste 1945-1968, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Site Richelieu, Paris

2007 Ambiguous Realities: Colour Photographs by Dorothy Bohm exhibition

at Ben Uri Gallery, London, curated by Monica Bohm-Duchen

Israel in Black and White: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm exhibition at Corman Arts, London

Inclusion of early studio portraits in How We Are: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain

2009 Work included in Continental Britons, Burgh House, London

Elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society

2010 Major retrospective exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, A World Observed 1940-2010: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm

2011 A World Observed travels to Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

2012 Women and Children First exhibition, Dimbola Museum and Galleries, Isle of Wight (Julia Margaret Cameron Trust)

Seeing and Feeling, solo exhibition at Margaret Street Gallery, London

Women in Focus: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm exhibition, Museum of London

Work included in Another London exhibition, Tate Britain

2013 Torn poster images included in Photo50, curated exhibition at London Art Fair, Islington

Sixties London solo exhibition of black and white photographs at Proud, Chelsea

2014 In Hampstead: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm 1994-2014, solo exhibition at

Museum of Hampstead, Burgh House, London

Work included in The History of European Photography, 1939-69 (FOTOFO, Bratislava)

2015 Included in Britain's Greatest Generation, BBC2 TV series

Work featured in Out of Chaos - Ben Uri:100 Years in London exhibition, Somerset House, London

Publication (by Dewi Lewis) of About Women: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm

2016 Dorothy Bohm: Sixties London exhibition at Jewish Museum, London

2018 Seeing Daylight: The Photography of Dorothy Bohm, documentary film directed by Richard Shaw

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

2020 Work included in Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain after 1933, Four Corners Gallery, London

Publication of London Street Markets 1960s-1970s and Sussex 1960s-1980s by Café Royal Books

2021 Cafe Royal book published on Paris

Forthcoming Cafe Royal books on New York & Mexico