ABOUT WOMEN: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOROTHY BOHM
7th March– 15th December 2024
Burgh House
New End Square
London
NW3 1LT
About Women: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm showcases the remarkable photographic journey of Dorothy Bohm, spanning over seven decades and capturing the evolving lives of women around the world. Through her lens, Bohm offers intimate, candid glimpses into the multifaceted experiences of womanhood. Born in Germany, Bohm arrived in the UK as a child refugee from Nazism in 1939. Settling in Hampstead in the late 1950s, she embarked on a lifelong exploration of women’s lives, portraying them with warmth, wit, and power.
Commenting on her work, Bohm famously said: “My idea was to portray women so that viewers could see what I could see, that women were changing”. Bohm’s career spanned a period that saw unprecedented shifts in the lives of women. Across the globe women had increased access to the vote, global wars saw them enter the workforce, the development of the contraceptive pill brought new freedoms, and feminist movements demanded equality.
This centenary exhibition, presented in collaboration with Bohm’s daughter, art historian Monica Bohm-Duchen, is the first to focus exclusively on Bohm’s profound contributions to photography. Though her has been widely exhibited across various themes and retrospectives, this is the first exhibition to focus on her photographs of women, and builds on the book ‘About Women’ (published c.2015).
Dorothy Bohm was 14 when her father placed a Leica camera around her neck as she boarded a train to England in June 1939, fleeing the rise of the Nazis in Europe. She set up her own photography studio in Manchester at the age of 21. In the late 1940s, frustrated by the formality of studio portraiture, she took her practice out into the world.
Avoiding the description of ‘street photographer’, she described herself as capturing the human condition. She made Hampstead her home in the late 1950s and in the early 1970s was involved in founding the Photographers’ Gallery, London, working as its Associate Director for 15 years. Of a career spanning more than seven decades and several continents Bohm commented, “the photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing”.
ABOUT WOMEN: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOROTHY BOHM opens on the 7th of March until the 15th of December 2024 at Burgh House
©2024 Burgh House
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