In the mid-1950s, my husband and I were living in Paris and my brother came to visit. I showed him around the city, took him to all my favourite places. We were up in Montmartre when I saw these kids, who were about nine and five. My French was good enough to chat with them. They told me they were going shopping for their mum. The little girl is carrying a box of Omo washing powder, the boy a bottle of wine, I think. I took a few shots but this was the most interesting one. You can see they were perfectly at ease, looking up at my brother, who was talking to them.
I love their expressions, but what makes this image so poignant is that it is also a piece of history: the fact that the streets weren’t properly paved; the sign on the wall; the way the children are dressed. I look at it and wonder about the life they led, the boy looking after his little sister. Life did not seem to be luxurious.
These days, Montmartre is full of tourists, but I knew it when it belonged to the artists. I was introduced to many of them by my friend Marie Nordlinger, who I met in Manchester when I was 16 and she was 65. She was an artist who had lived in Paris when she was younger. Her cousin was Marcel Proust’s boyfriend and she and Proust became close. I remember her showing me letters he had written to her, impossible handwriting going this way and that.
It was around this time that I began to discover the joy of working outdoors with natural light. Louis, my husband, worked for a petrochemical company and was constantly travelling. I spent a lot of time by myself. I met an artist called Avigdor Arikha and, through him, got to know the Paris tourists don’t see. I remember once going on a walk with him and he asked for my camera to photograph a dustbin. It was an interesting picture – that taught me something.
I didn’t start out wanting to be a photographer. When I was 14, I was sent to Britain to escape the Nazis. My father had a Leica, which in the 1930s wasn’t that common. As I was leaving Lithuania, leaning out of the train to say goodbye, he handed it to me, saying: “This might be useful.”
I was a bookish child and wanted to be a doctor. But there was no money for this. My father’s cousin suggested photography and took me to the London studio of a French-Czech photographer, Germaine Canova. Setting foot in the studio was like falling in love. Canova agreed to teach me but the bombing started and we had to get out of London. Canova closed her studio and I went to study photography in Manchester, where my brother was.
It was there I met Louis, who was doing a PhD. I agreed to marry him – provided he continued his studies. I felt capable of earning enough for us both. I’m still proud of that: at 21, in 1945, I was supporting our life. Most of my friends at the time were men, because most girls were only interested in getting married and having children. But I was running my own place, Studio Alexander, working very hard. I looked so young, people could never believe I was the owner.
I’m going to be 95 next year. When Louis died 25 years ago, I was devastated. We’d been together since I was 16. But I decided he would be ashamed of me if I didn’t carry on. Since then, I have focused completely on my work, which has always had an emphasis on childhood and humour. Where I live today in London there are a lot of schools and I love to look out as the pupils walk past. Children look better nowadays: they’re much healthier and better fed.
Throughout my career, I have concentrated on things that are, hopefully, inspiring. We’re always being shown how dreadful things are. I try to go the other way.
• Little Happenings: Photographs of Children by Dorothy Bohm is at the V&A Museum of Childhood, London, until 17 March.
Dorothy Bohm’s CV
Born: Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), 1924.
Training: Course in photographic technology at Manchester College of Technology
Influences: “1940s Italian films, especially Fellini; also Ingmar Bergman. Not other photographers, as I only encountered these in the early 1970s, once I’d become associate director of the Photographers’ Gallery in London.”
High point: “Probably the 2005 exhibition of my Paris photographs at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, partly because the feedback from the Parisians who came to see it was so positive and partly because I have such wonderful memories of a year I spent living in Paris with my husband Louis in the mid-1950s.”
Low point: “Not a low point exactly, but the period when my two daughters were very small, between the late 1950s and mid-1960s, were certainly less productive for me.”
Top tip: “Do NOT press the shutter until you’re certain this is the image you want!”
