“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