August 1968, Soviet tanks occupy Czechoslovakia and Yuri’s status of a summer student
in London changes overnight to one of a refugee. A year later he lands in Toronto
where he still lives.
Four decades later Yuri Dojc is a major figure on the global photographic scene. He has
earned considerable recognition for both his commercial and artistic ouvre. His work
ranging from cityscapes to nudes is exhibited and published regularly. His recent work
in Rwanda has appeared in the French daily Liberation under the dramatic headline of
“Landscape of Genocide”.
Serendipity led Yuri and the documentary fi lm team to an abandoned jewish school in
eastern Slovakia, where time had stood still since the day in 1943 when all those
attending it were taken away to the camps… the school books all still there, essay
notebooks with corrections, school reports, even the sugar still in the cupboard…
These decaying books lying on dusty shelves; the last witnesses of a once thriving culture,
are treated by Yuri like the survivors that they each are - every one captured as
a portrait, preserved in their fi nal beauty, pictures speaking a thousand words.
Amongst these many hundreds of books and fragments photographed by Yuri, one
stands out especially - one which miraculously found its way from a dusty pile to its
rightfull heir - a book once owned by Yuri’s grandfather Jakub.
About Katya Krausova
About Yuri Dojc