Yuri Dojc

Yuri Dojc (born May 12, 1946) is a Slovak-Canadian fine arts and commercial photographer whose works include black and white nude studies, portraits of Canadian World War II veterans and projects such as American Dreams, Marble Woman and his Last Folio exhibit.^[1]

Early life and education

Dojc grew up in Humenné in Eastern Slovakia, where his father was headmaster of a secondary school and his mother a teacher. The family later relocated to Bratislava. In 1968^[2] he was on a summer student exchange program in London when the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred. Following the advice of his father, Dojc decided that he would not return and a year later emigrated to Toronto, Canada.

Dojc studied mechanical engineering followed by psychology at Comenius University in Bratislava before the Soviet invasion interrupted his schooling. Upon arriving in Canada, he enrolled in the photography program at Ryerson University^[3] in Toronto. While at school, he become photo editor of the student weekly Eyeopener working alongside future newspaper journalist Christie Blatchford, CBC reporter Paul Workman, City reporter Jojo Chintoh and comedian Paul Chato.

Career

Among Dojc's early influences are Edward Weston, Irving Penn, Man Ray and Guy Bourdin, as well as painters René Magritte, Egon Schiele, and Amedeo Modigliani. His early shots were of doors, windows, chairs and flowers before gravitating toward human subjects. In the 1980s during the height of the poster business, Dojc's images appeared in the movie D.C. Cab. "Legs", "Bicycle", and "Chair" were three of his biggest sellers. His commercial clients have included FedEx, Apple, GM, Porsche, Canon, Club Med, Brooks and Panasonic.^[4]

Exhibits

• Last Folio: A Photographic Journey with Yuri Dojc opened at the Grunwald Gallery at the University of Indiana on September 1, 2011.^[5] Other exhibits and showcases include the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York; the European Commission in Brussels; the Gonwille Cays Library in Cambridge, England; the oldest synagogue in Košice, Slovakia (opened on June 11, 2013);^[6] and the National Museum of Slovakia.^[7]

Books

• Last Folio, University of Indiana Press, 2011
• Honour, Chartwell, 2010
• Eros Fotographia Yuri Dojc, Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, 2003
• Marble Woman, Firefly Books, 1993

References

External links

• Official website
• Time Magazine Story
• Pentagram Story
• Forward Story
• Images immortalise Jewish past in Slovakia (The Slovak Spectator)
• Yuri Dojc on Photosensitive