Artist

Photographer, artist and witness, Yuri Dojc’s expansive practice encompasses many kinds of looking. His multi-lens trajectory has pivoted from an established commercial photography practice to his current gaze as an artful observer of the vestiges of history’s most vulnerable.

In 1968, as Russian tanks were rolling into his native Czechoslovakia, the young student summering in London became, abruptly, “refugee.” And soon, that status shifted again, to immigrant, as Dojc made his way to Canada. In the decades since, the photographer has made Toronto his home, and the world both his subject and his host.

Dojc is best known for his observational approach to the past, with its alloy of subjectivities, empathy, and intimacy. Since the late 1990s, he has been documenting Slovakia's last living Holocaust survivors and the country’s abandoned synagogues, schools, and cemeteries for a series called Last Folio. An international success, this show travels extensively, with major exhibitions in Rome, Berlin, Moscow, New York, Sao Paulo among others. A feature length documentary by filmmaker Katya Krausova, a Producer of the Last Folio project, premiered in 2016 in Toronto and is now being screened world-wide.

In Dojc’s most recent series, North is Freedom: The Legacy of the Underground Railroad as in so much of his work, the photographer illustrates the power of art to convey a narrative that continues to touch us here, now, and into the future.

Producer

Katya Krausova is a British independent television producer/director. She is the co-founder of the leading UK Arts and Drama independent film and television production company PORTOBELLO PICTURES, which won the 1997 ACADEMY AWARD for KOLYA, the Best Foreign Language Film. Portobello Media continues to provide media consultancy as well as the production of a variety of projects. Ms Krausova is based in London, UK and is fluent in English, Slovak, Czech, Russian, German and Spanish.

Czechoslovak born, Ms Krausova arrived in Britain following the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia and she completed her undergraduate studies in economics and politics at the London School of Economics and post–graduate studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

She started her television career at the BBC in 1976 where she researched and produced many current affairs documentaries including a number of award winning Panorama investigations. Topics ranged from co!existence with the Soviet Union, issues affecting Germany in the seventies and eighties, attempts to achieve an Islamic nuclear bomb to President Carter’s handling of the US/Iran hostage crisis.

After the BBC she continued her career as an independent producer and director, primarily in the field of music and arts. Her documentaries and performance programmes have been co-produced with many national broadcasters worldwide. Amongst the many internationally renowned artists she has repeatedly worked with are SIR GEORG SOLTI, JACQUELINE DU PRE, ANDRAS SCHIFF and DANIEL BARENBOIM, KIRI TE KANAWA, Barbican 5th Birthday concert with MURRAY PERAHIA, a LIVE GALA CONCERT FROM PRAGUE CASTLE FOR PRINCE CHARLES and PRESIDENT HAVEL’s Prague Heritage Foundation, Beethoven sonatas with Claudio Arrau for his 80th birthday, a documentary on VIKTORIA MULLOVA’s first year out of the Soviet Union!Welcome to the West, Andras Schiff in Budapest, and with the Royal Ballet choreographer DAVID BINTLEY a number of his original pieces! Gallantries, Hobson’s Choice as well as Still Life at Penguin Cafe. In 1994 she co-produced a major feature film of VLADIMIR VOINOVICH’S “LIFE AND EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF PRIVATE IVAN CHONKIN” directed by the Oscar winning Czech director Jiri Menzel with an all Russian cast. The film was awarded the Gold Medal at the 1994 Venice Film Festival.

Since the political changes in Eastern Europe, Ms Krausova has been involved in advising as well as project management in the film and television industries of the CZECHEPUBLIC, SLOVAKIA, HUNGARY, POLAND, BULGARIA, ROMANIA and the UKRAINE and setting up a soap opera in KAZAKSTAN in association with the KNOW HOW FUND, a British government’s technical assistance programme for the countries of the former Soviet bloc.

She has initiated and organised the EAST WEST PRODUCERS SEMINAR, which has since its establishment in 1990, completed a number of training activities in the field of business of film, television, media, entertainment law, copyright protection, sponsorship, and marketing for the arts. Over three hundred young professionals from all over Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union participated in the annual workshops and Masterclasses, as well as twenty five Orchestra managers who learned “survival methods” in the absence of State subsidies. Other Know How Fund supported activities in this field included consultancies to Czech Broadcasting Council, Management reports for Polish, Slovak and Bulgarian and Czech Television, Business plan for the privatization of the BARRANDOV FILM STUDIOS.

Since 2002, Ms Krausova has been active as a producer in the field of international debates as a founding member and producer of INTELLIGENCE SQUARED, the now well established debating forum based in London. With the NEXUS Institute in Holland organizing a series of intellectual summits, amongst them a series on both sides of the Atlantic entitled “EUROPEA BEAUTIFUL IDEA” which coincided with the Dutch Presidency of the EU. producing international academic workshops and debates in the field of economics, politics, international relations and neuro–economics, sponsored by the US based GRUTER INSTITUTE Foundation in collaboration with Queen Mary College, London University and the NYU Business School, which took place on both sides of the Atlantic in 2007.

Since 2005, she has been working on a major documentary project about the remains of Jewish culture in Slovakia, following the work of the celebrated Canadian photographer Yuri Dojc. A series of exhibitions entitled LAST FOLIO, showcasing this project has already been traveling in Europe and the UK since 2008 and is planned to be further exhibited in major museums and institutions in Moscow, New York, Brussels, Berlin and Amsterdam, amongst other cities.