PHOTO ESSAY

Northern Exposures

Lovers of Canadian photography get Carte Blanche

By Alec Scott

April 20, 2006

• 1
|
• 2
|
• 3
|
• 4
|
• 5
|
• 6
|
• 7
|
• 8
|
• 9
|
• 10
|
• 11

Old World (from the series We Endured). Photograph by Yuri Dojc.

Toronto resident Yuri Dojc took 10 years to complete a series of portraits of Holocaust survivors in his native Slovakia. “Recently, my shots were projected on the walls of synagogues in Slovakia that have now become art galleries,” Dojc says. The woman in this shot wouldn’t speak much about her wartime ordeal, but her neighbours took the photographer aside to fill in some narrative gaps. “Her son had recently died,” says Dojc, “and she was the only one left of all her family. She was an incredibly strong, powerful character, but she was not celebrated by her society. In many cases, these survivors still have to hide who they are. One I came across would wear a bandage over her concentration camp tattoo, because children would laugh at it, and her, in the street.”