Reviews

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Forgotten Cemeteries and Synagogues Featured in Toronto Photo Exhibit of Jewish Landmarks in Ukraine

by BARBARA SILVERSTEIN, From the Canadian Jewish News, April 29, 2022
Russia’s war in Ukraine has probably destroyed or damaged many of the country’s historical landmarks, including Jewish sites. The destruction is a major loss. But it’s relatively minor when measured against the suffering of the Ukrainians, says David Kaufman. There are hundreds of Jewish heritage sites throughout Ukraine, and in 2016 Kaufman was able to photograph a number of these
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David Kaufman Photographs on Exhibit in Toronto

by JULIAN AND FAY BUSSGANG, From Gazeta, A quarterly publication of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, Summer/Fall 2020 issue
For almost thirty years, Toronto-based photographer and filmmaker David Kaufman has been documenting Jewish heritage sites in Eastern Europe. Kaufman made his first trip to Poland in 1992 to make Hidden Children, a documentary about child survivors of the Holocaust. A decade later, he visited Poland to make films about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and about the Łódź Ghetto. He
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Photographing Europe’s Lost Jewish Heritage

by BARBARA SILVERSTEIN, From the Canadian Jewish News, March 19, 2020
Back in 1992, David Kaufman, an acclaimed photographer and an award-winning documentary filmmaker, was in Poland doing research for CBC television on Polish child survivors of the Holocaust. His trip coincided with the discovery of a Jewish burial site near Warsaw. The tombstones of the former Jewish cemetery were lined up and standing vertically. “I was blown away by their
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Photographing Eastern Europe’s Fading Jewish Architecture

by EMMA DAVIS, From Tablet Magazine - The Scroll, Nov. 7, 2017
Photographer David Kaufman looks at the world through a historical lens. Quite literally, in fact, as he shoots with bellows, the folding attachment used on cameras since the Civil War. Though Kaufman is fascinated by the past, his old-fashioned equipment has a more practical purpose: the bellows prevent the converging vertical lines that would otherwise distort his architectural photography. The
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The “Gardens of Memory” of Ukraine

by RUTY KOROTAEV, From the Canadian Jewish News, May 11, 2017
Few people would be able to see beauty in an old and neglected cemetery in Eastern Europe, but to photographer David Kaufman, old Jewish cemeteries are precious “gardens of memory.” Kaufman, a Toronto-based photographer and documentary filmmaker, has been taking still photos of Jewish heritage sites since 2007, and went to western Ukraine in June 2016 to see some Jewish
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David Kaufman’s Early Sunday Morning shows a bygone Toronto

by MARTIN KNELMAN, From The Toronto Star, May 3, 2013
Early Sunday Morning, David Kaufman’s current photo exhibition, is a love letter to Toronto’s historic streetscapes. The stars of the show are three-storey brick buildings that line both Queen St. W. and E., many dating back to the 1880s. Even as downtown Toronto becomes more dominated every year by new condo towers, Kaufman find himself increasingly drawn to these modest
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Short Takes on Early Sunday Morning

Reviewers,  NOW Magazine and Toronto Life, May 2013
NOW Magazine, May 23, 2013: ART: Contact Photography Festival Can’t-miss exhibitions in the mammoth photography festival: David Kaufman Twist Gallery, 1100 Queen St W By Fran Schechter Calling his show Early Sunday Morning after an Edward Hopper painting, photographer/filmmaker Kaufman channels the luminous stillness of Hopper’s early 20th-century urban scenes in order to pay homage to Toronto’s pre-World War I
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Photographers Preserve Places of Prayer

by HEATHER SOLOMON, From The Canadian Jewish News, January 10, 2008
The places where we pray are part of us. The physical buildings host baby namings, bar mitzvahs, weddings and Kaddish prayers, as well as community gatherings of dear faces that uphold us through our lifetimes. corporated into its exterior masonry. This is why the exhibition of more than 30 photos that opened in early December and continues until March 18,
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Photography Exhibition Tells A Tale of Two Cities

by MARTIN KNELMAN, From The Toronto Star, May 11, 2006
The late Jane Jacobs, who loved taking walks through many of Toronto’s more modest neighbourhoods, would have loved David Kaufman’s intriguing photography exhibition The Disappearing City. Kaufman puts the spotlight not on huge well-known buildings like the Inn on the Park, which was shockingly obliterated this week, but on the kind of small, eccentric buildings that help give a city
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