Camden New Journal - Features: Israel in Black and White

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Published: 14 June 2007

Children playing in a synagogue courtyard, Jerusalem 1976

Give peace a chance

DOROTHY Bohm started taking photographs to “stop things from disappearing”.
The renowned Hampstead photographer, now 82, arrived in England nearly 70 years ago, after fleeing Nazi Germany and being tragically separated from her family.
“The photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing,” she said. “I have tried to create order out of chaos, to find stability in flux and beauty in the most unlikely places.”
Perhaps nowhere is this better expressed than in Bohm’s latest exhibition – a pictorial journey into the heart of Israel, since the country’s birth in 1948 until a few years ago.
“I was interested as a child in the possibility of Israel,” she says.
“Many of my family now live there so I had photographed it from the beginning. I had really known the country throughout this time and I think the pictures reflect that.”
The 40 black-and-white images, many from the 1970s when Bohm was still working in black and white, are “totally non-political”, she adds.
“It was a different Israel then,” she says. “We have chosen pictures of Arab women sitting peacefully around the lake of Galilee and Arab and Israeli children playing together.
“What I wish for most of all is peace. I have got to come to terms with what’s happening at the moment. It’s sad. I want to see an Israel that co-exists peacefully with its neighbours. I hope I live long enough to see it.”

* Israel in Black and White:
photographs by Dorothy Bohm is at Corman Arts, June 22-29.
Daleham Gardens, NW3
Viewing by appointment.
Tel: 020 7433 1339

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