1960s.

Signed and dated in ink lower left recto and also signed in pencil on the mount lower right.

Image size, 29 x 24 cm.

"Characterized by emotional receptivity and an immediacy of vision Bohm's images reflect a joy and affirmation of life. The gentleness of Kertesz, the humour of Doisneau, the subtle irony of Alvarez Bravo and the basic humanist approach of all, are ever present in her photographs and rank her in the same league."

Nissan Perez (from Dorothy Bohm Photographs, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1986)

Previously a studio photographer in Manchester, Dorothy Bohm has photographed London since she moved to the city in 1956, focusing always on the small details of everyday life. She created a major sequence of works through her explorations of various parts of the city during the late 1960s. Bohm here depicts a scene from the last days of the old Covent Garden market, with Ian Jeffrey having commented on its conscious anachronisms:

'But for the man's Beatles-era hairstyle and his shoes, the picture could have been taken very early in the century by a documentarist putting together a dossier on street trades. Why, then, this deliberate turning back of the clock? Because 1939-45 made a huge difference to the conscience of photographers, many of whom - principally the documentarists - set out to expunge the old disastrous arrogance and to restore to humanity a sense of the fabric and flavour of ordinary life. The most thorough-going of these revivalists were the Italian Neo-Realists, and this picture refers to their earth-bound aesthetic.Sixties London: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm, Lund Humphries, 1996)