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Art General

Last Folio

Textures of Jewish Life in Slovakia

by (author) Yuri Dojc & Katya Krausova

Publisher
Indiana University Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2011
Category
General, Holocaust
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780253223777
    Publish Date
    Apr 2011
    List Price
    $32.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

Last Folio features stunning photographs taken by Yuri Dojc of once-vibrant Jewish communities throughout Slovakia. Dojc's photographic journey began in an abandoned school in Bardejov where time had stood still since the day in 1942 when its students were taken to concentration camps. The books were still there, along with student essays marked with corrections and school reports?all disintegrating on dusty shelves. Dojc's eloquent photographs treat the decaying books as survivors, the last witnesses to what had been a thriving culture. Last Folio also includes portraits of aging Slovak Holocaust survivors and images of the poignant ruins of schools, synagogues, mikvahs, and cemeteries. With texts by Lucia Faltin, Katya Krausova, David G. Marwell, and Azar Nafisi, Last Folio presents a stirring tribute to a vanished culture.

About the authors

Contributor Notes

Yuri Dojc is an internationally acclaimed photographer whose work is included in the collections of the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Canada, and the National Museum of Slovakia. An emigre to Canada from Czechoslovakia, he received a medal of honor from the Slovak Ambassador to the United States in 2001 for We Endured, a series of portraits of Holocaust survivors.

Katya Krausova, a television producer who emigrated to Great Britain from Czechoslovakia in 1968, is a co-founder of Portobello Pictures, an independent film and television production company in the United Kingdom that won the 1997 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for Kolya.

Editorial Reviews

"Books in these photographs . . . are possessed by spirits exorcised through Yuri Dojc's magical eye: as they disintegrate into dust, the camera illuminates how that moment of disintegration is also a moment of immense energy and movement, one last and glorious statement of defiance, resisting both death and oblivion."?Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

"In the context of the trauma of the Holocaust, Dojc has delivered hauntingly beautiful images?jewel-like tokens?that link us by imagination to a lost world and time. . . . As we look at these images of all that remained, we remember all that was lost."?David G. Marwell, Director, Museum of Jewish Heritage

"This slim catalog of the recent exhibit by award-winning photographer Yuri Dojc gives the reader a new viewpoint of the indescribable loss of the Holocaust. The accompanying text describing the journey that produced these pictures is well written and concise."?AJL Reviews

"Each picture not only grabs your attention because of the technique and chilling content, but also because of the raw emotion of the images, themselves beautiful objects. Dojc's work reminds us of a once vibrant community now lost.July 17, 2011"?Bloomington Herald-Times

"[This book] is visually stunning and verbally bold."?Canadian Jewish News

"Dojc's images beautifully commemorate the history of the Jewish people and culture of slovakia. . . . The texts by Katya Krausova, Azar Nafisi, and Lufia Faltin provide meaningful context, and the subject matter is treated with deep respect and sensitivity."?www.photolife.com