Yuri Dojc

Yuri Dojc (1946) is a Slovak‑Canadian photographer whose work bridges commercial practice and deeply felt documentary projects. Born in Humenné, then Czechoslovakia, Dojc was studying in London when the 1968 Soviet invasion turned him into a refugee; he soon settled in Toronto, where he launched a successful career in advertising and portraiture.

In the late 1990s, Dojc turned his lens toward history’s most vulnerable survivors. His ongoing series Last Folio documents Slovakia’s last living Holocaust survivors alongside the abandoned synagogues, schools, and cemeteries that bear their stories. By pairing intimate black‑and‑white portraits with images of decaying interiors, Dojc creates a powerful dialogue between past and present—a project exhibited in Rome, Berlin, Moscow, New York, and São Paulo, and the subject of the 2016 documentary by Katya Krausova.

More recently, Dojc’s North Is Freedom: The Legacy of the Underground Railroad traces the journeys of Canadian descendants of enslaved people, using portraiture and archival materials to explore themes of freedom and memory. Through both series, he demonstrates photography’s capacity to bear witness and foster empathy, transforming personal histories into universal narratives. Now based in Toronto, Dojc continues to expand his practice, using the camera as “an artful observer of the vestiges of history’s most vulnerable.”