We are delighted to be lending to the exhibition Dorothy Bohm. London Street Markets at the Centre for British Photography.
The exhibition will be made up of familiar and unfamiliar works. As Bohm's daughter, the art historian Monica Bohm-Duchen, writes:
"Familiar or otherwise, collectively they present a vivid picture of a bygone world, sometimes entertaining and extrovert, as often melancholy and introspective, but always humane, empathetic and engaging - a world of horse carts and cloth caps, hard work and meagre monetary rewards but also of unexpected grace, good-humoured camaraderie and other rewards less possible to quantify."
The comfortable central European world in which Dorothy Bohm (née Israelit) grew up was a very different one to that of the London street markets she was to be so fascinated by over three decades later. Born in Königsberg, East Prussia, in 1924, her Jewish family left Germany and moved to Memel in Lithuania in 1932; in June 1939, just a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War, her parents made the wise but difficult decision to send her to the safety of England. By Dorothy's own admission, and fully understandable given her early experience of profound displacement, photography's unique ability to stop time in its tracks and preserve a moment for ever lies at the very heart of its appeal for her.
The exhibition presents works from the photographer's estate and from the Hyman Collection. It is curated by Monica Bohm-Duchen and James Hyman.
