“A World Observed 1940 – 2010: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm” is a major exhibition running at the Manchester City Art Gallery until 30 August.
Dorothy Bohm was born in East Prussia who came to Britain as a refugee fleeing the Nazis at the beginning of the Second World War. She studied photography in at Manchester College of Technology and after graduating started work in the city as a portrait photographer.
This exhibition has a large number of photographs spanning her long career. The early photographs are portraits from her time as a commercial photographer, but she soon branched out into “street” photography devoting her time exclusively to this in the 1950′s and the majority of the photographs featured in the exhibition are of this genre. She has travelled extensively and there are photographs on display taken from all over the world.
Quite a few of the photographs taken when she initially strayed out of the studio were effectively portraits of people. She clearly posed her subjects as she would in the studio. Some examples can be seen on the City Gallery website including these two here and here. Others feature people in the street but still probably posed. An example shown on the City Gallery website here.
Her early work was in black and white but in the 1980′s she started working exclusively in colour.
“Street” photography is a good description of her later work. Although there are some landscape photographs many of her pictures feature ordinary people caught in their everyday setting in the streets where they live their lives. In some of her later photographs people are present but are not the main feature of the composition. They are like other objects, adding to the overall picture without dominating it. This is the case in a photograph taken in Lisbon which, according to an article in the Guardian, she considers to be her best shot
There are also some more abstract pictures that don’t feature people, including a series of photographs of torn posters, such as this one, and some atmospheric landscapes.
The exhibition is very comprehensive and includes some excellent pictures, bit there were too many to look at them all as thoroughly as I’d have liked. As it’s on show until August another visit or two will be worthwhile. As public art galleries in Britain are free to enter its easy to do that (providing I can find the time!)
