Dorothy Bohm Collection

Date range: 1940s, 1950s, 2010s

Medium: Archive, Photography

Number of items: c 110 prints

Dorothy Bohm was a Russian-born British photographer known for her portraiture and street photography. Over the course of her career, more than twenty books of her work were published. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and are held in major public and private collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate, and the Musée Carnavalet in Paris.

Born in 1924, Dorothy was sent to England in 1939 to escape the rise of Nazism. She first arrived in Sussex, later moving to Manchester, where her brother was studying. There she met Louis Bohm, a Polish student who would become her husband in 1945. Bohm studied photography at the Manchester Municipal College of Technology and after graduation, she worked for four years with photographer Samuel Cooper before opening her own portrait studio, Studio Alexander, on Market Street in Manchester in 1946. Her studio work supported the family while her husband completed his PhD. In the years that followed, Bohm and her husband travelled extensively and she eventually sold the studio in 1958.

As she travelled, Bohm transitioned from studio portraiture to street photography, building an international career. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1969 at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, and in 1970 she published her first book, A World Observed. The following year, she played a key role in founding The Photographers’ Gallery in London, where she served as Associate Director for fifteen years, mentoring a new generation of photographers.

In recognition of her contributions to the field, Bohm was made an Honorary Fellow of the UK’s Royal Photographic Society in 2009. She remained deeply involved in photography until her passing in 2023. This collection highlights the formative period Bohm spent in Manchester, developing her professional practice, and commemorates the 2010 exhibition of her work at Manchester Art Gallery.

The collection includes:

• Almost 100 black and white portrait photographs taken at Studio Alexander
• Ephemera relating to Studio Alexander and Dorothy Bohm’s life in Manchester in the 1940s
• 11 colour photographs taken in Manchester between 2008 and 2010
• Ephemera relating to the retrospective exhibition of Dorothy’s work at Manchester Art Gallery in 2010
• Original negatives of both bodies of work

The collection is of interest to researchers across many disciplines, including photography, the history of photography, the history of art; and to those interested in visual culture and sociology.

See also:

• Café Royal Books
• John Davies Collection
• Martin Parr Collection
• Photography Collection
• Roger Taylor Collection

Further information:

Cataloguing in process

Location:

• The John Rylands Library, Deansgate  [Map]
• Find out how to use the reading rooms in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library