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Book Tip: Call me Lola. In Search of Mother
Book Tip: Call me Lola. In Search of Mother
March 4, 2025
Enigma, 2019 © Loli Kantor
The two portraits on the cover reveal the theme of this photo book: the author’s family history, which takes centre stage. In a somewhat blurred black and white image on the front cover, a woman poses at the entrance to the Argentine metro station in Paris, located on Avenue de la Grande Armée. Today, the intersection is dedicated to a resistance fighter couple and is called Place Yvon-et-Claire-Morandat. In the same way that history is inscribed on the city map, the site is linked to a personal memory for the author – as seen on the back cover of the book, which shows a second woman in front of the same metro station. It is Loli Kantor herself, in 2019, standing in the place of her mother, whose portrait was taken 68 years earlier at the same location.
Call Me Lola: In Search of Mother represents the conclusion of a twenty-year process, during which the photographer traced her own history, rummaged through family archives, and took photographs. She also did research in Poland, France, Ukraine, Germany and Israel. Born in Paris in 1952, and currently living in Fort Worth, Texas, the photographer visualised her family history by mixing old family pictures with her own new portraits and strongly associative shots.
Kantor’s mother Lola died two hours after giving birth to her daughter in Paris. Over the course of her life, Kantor learned about her mother indirectly – through images, artifacts, and documents. Both her parents were Holocaust survivors. Her father was a Polish-born doctor and political activist, while her mother passed as a Polish Roman Catholic, by using false documents to escape the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland. Kantor’s father died suddenly, at age 50, when she was 14. Her grandparents perished in the Holocaust; and her only remaining blood brother Ami died unexpectedly, also at age 50.
Kantor has written this moving book in order to confront her own loss and grief, but also out of a desire to turn the fragments of her own story into a narrative that she can pass on to her own family. The book is not only a meditation on Kantor’s personal loss and the reconstruction of her family story; it also contains a reflective depth of considerations surrounding the global historical tragedy that was the Holocaust. To put it simply, it is about forming a picture; but, in this case, the process took an intense feat of strength. Based upon the individual story presented in the book, it is possible to draw profound conclusions about memory, identity and loss in a much more general way – which is what makes the book so remarkable and enthralling.
Ulrich RüterCall Me Lola: In Search of Mother represents the conclusion of a twenty-year process, during which the photographer traced her own history, rummaged through family archives, and took photographs. She also did research in Poland, France, Ukraine, Germany and Israel. Born in Paris in 1952, and currently living in Fort Worth, Texas, the photographer visualised her family history by mixing old family pictures with her own new portraits and strongly associative shots.
Kantor’s mother Lola died two hours after giving birth to her daughter in Paris. Over the course of her life, Kantor learned about her mother indirectly – through images, artifacts, and documents. Both her parents were Holocaust survivors. Her father was a Polish-born doctor and political activist, while her mother passed as a Polish Roman Catholic, by using false documents to escape the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland. Kantor’s father died suddenly, at age 50, when she was 14. Her grandparents perished in the Holocaust; and her only remaining blood brother Ami died unexpectedly, also at age 50.
Kantor has written this moving book in order to confront her own loss and grief, but also out of a desire to turn the fragments of her own story into a narrative that she can pass on to her own family. The book is not only a meditation on Kantor’s personal loss and the reconstruction of her family story; it also contains a reflective depth of considerations surrounding the global historical tragedy that was the Holocaust. To put it simply, it is about forming a picture; but, in this case, the process took an intense feat of strength. Based upon the individual story presented in the book, it is possible to draw profound conclusions about memory, identity and loss in a much more general way – which is what makes the book so remarkable and enthralling.
Loli Kantor: Call me Lola. In Search of Mother+-
With an essay by Nissan N. Perez, and a conversation between Loli Kantor and Danna Heller.
232 pages, 199 colour and black and white images, 20.7 × 28.8 cm, English, Hatje Cantz
Website Loli Kantor
Instagram Loli Kantor
Enigma, 2019 © Loli Kantor
Autumn in Paris, 2018 © Loli Kantor
Lola and Zwi Kantor wedding, Munich, 1946 © Unidentified Photograher
Lighting Candles © Unidentified Photograher
Passport, 1951; Handwritten Commentary by Loli Kantor, 2019
Ami and Loli, Chicago, circa 1956 © Unidentified Photographer
Self Portrait, 2004 © Loli Kantor
She, Lviv, 2018 © Loli Kantor
Loli One Month Old, La Varenne, France © Unidentified Photographer
Farewell Note to Baby Lola; Handwritten by Mm. Alloncle, Loli's Nanny in La Varenne near Paris, 1952
Lola, Paris © Unidentified Photographer
Loli, Paris, November 2019 © Peggy Anderson