NYAB Event - Loli Kantor "There was a Forest, Palladium Series, The Monuments 2005

Loli Kantor "There was a Forest, Palladium Series, The Monuments 2005 - 2006"

Dutch Kills Gallery

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Dutch Kills Gallery presents the work of Israeli-American photographer, Loli Kantor.

Ms. Kantor’s documentary photography portrays the disappearing population of Holocaust survivors and their lives within the small enclaves in Eastern Europe known as Shtetls. She also focuses on the reemergence of Jewish life and culture within the communities and groups in which these survivors live, through visiting and maintaining close relationships over a period of years. Her work functions as a witness to the revival of Jewish traditions, especially in Poland and Ukraine.

The title of this body of work There Was a Forest alludes to both the forest of the natural world, and the metaphorical human forest of Jewish life, both of which have been placed at risk of destruction by forces of technology, industrialization, and war. Natural landscapes seem more resilient than populations of people. These populations are slow to recover and are never the same. Ms. Kantor’s project reflects on the efforts of remnant communities, post-Holocaust, trying to preserve their Jewish identity.

Robert Abzug, historian of the Holocaust and Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies, University of Texas at Austin, says of Ms. Kantor’s project and process:

Memory and hope are visible in the moving and surprising scenes of daily life among the revived Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine. The palladium prints echo the indelible images of Roman Vishniac and others whose recording of the shtetl and its inhabitants in the 1930’s proved to be the final snapshots of a doomed life. The stillness of the sepia prints of modern day are in some sense like ghosts miraculously reborn. The jarring digital color photographs record modest contemporary households, common objects, and hints of everyday life.

A fine art and documentary photographer, Loli Kantor was born in 1952 in Paris, France, and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel, and the U.S. She presently lives in Fort Worth, Texas. Ms. Kantor’s work has been exhibited widely in the U.S., and internationally in Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, and China.