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Created between 2004-2005, the photographs in this series are from Ukraine only, where the artist engaged with an older generation of Jews who remained after the Holocaust - some by choice and some because they were too old and ill to relocate. Kantor’s images from several cities in the region show the circle of Jewish life: the aging Holocaust survivors, new monuments erected, and the reexamination and repair of old synagogues and cemeteries. They also touch upon the important subject of the vanishing shtetl from the Jewish landscape of Eastern Europe.
The images that make up this project begin as the artist places herself within the Jewish cultural landscape. Hebrew, German, French, Polish, Yiddish, and English, all languages spoken by Kantor, allow her to connect and access the many people she searches and later photographs. This adds another layer of subtle intimacy and closeness to the subjects being photographed and their comfortable relationship with the artist. Each work is therefore a mirror of her physical, mental and emotional interaction with the space and persons being photographed.
This body of work has become a larger photographic exploration of the continuing impact that the Holocaust and the subsequent Soviet Regime had on the people, especially the remaining Jewish population of Eastern Europe. On a deeper level, the work explores the survival of a culture following a catastrophic event, when the majority of a population disappeared. The fact is that the Jewish cultural landscape, although layered with dust and decay, still exists.
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