Graduating from St Martin’s School of Art in 1970, John Goto’s love of photography and film took him via British Council Scholarships to study both art forms in Paris (Ecole de Louis Lumiere 1978) and to Prague (FAMU Film School 1983).
Whilst in Prague he visited the transit camp of TEREZIN that had held Jewish people prisoner enroute to concentration camps during the Second World War 1941-1945. He took photographs of the remaining buildings in the landscape and held them in mind for several years before beginning work on them, having researched the history of Terezin and compiling a dossier of images.
In 1988 they were exhibited alongside photographs that he compiled from realizing the unthinkable horrors of the camp. The Terezin images were first exhibited in Wadham College Ante Chapel Oxford during the International Scholars Symposium ‘Remembering for the Future’ which focused on Holocaust & Genocide during both World Wars.
The exhibition has since been exhibited nationally and internationally. This exhibition is a small but powerful selection of the Terezin images where the artist captures the horror and narrative of dark times with sensitivity and deep compassion.
