20/09/12
Dorothy Bohm: Seeing
and Feeling
Margaret Street
Gallery
30 July – 29
September 2012
“I have spent my
lifetime taking photographs. The photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things
from disappearing. It makes transience less painful and retains some of the
special magic, which I have looked for and found.”
At the grand old age of
88, Dorothy Bohm (born 1924, Königsberg, East
Prussia) has indeed been taking photos for nearly a lifetime – for over
70 years, in fact, since her father handed her his Leica as she boarded the
train to England to escape the Nazis in 1939. Her vast repertoire has grown
from an early concentration on portraiture, to include still lifes, landscapes,
cityscapes, and general images of human interest: snapshots of everyday life
and society. Whilst Bohm herself asserts that “People everywhere experience the
same joys, terrors, loves and tragedies,” her photographs nonetheless capture
both the obvious and the more subtle distinctions between different social
classes and cultures, both at home and abroad.
To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2012/09/seeing-and-feeling-2/