2025
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LOLA KINGSLEY
LOLA KINGSLEY is a photographer from Montréal. Using analog photography as her primary form of expression, she operates with a philosophy of consistent minimalism seeking to reveal the essence of her subjects in ways that feel authentic and transparent. Her images balance documentary sincerity with an almost cinematic sensitivity, transforming fleeting moments into quiet testaments to identity and belonging.
Lola Kingsley, 2025
I reached out to Lola after encountering her photographs: portraits of youth that radiate both intimacy and distance. She struck me as a photographer whose practice transcends technical mastery; her work feels like an extension of her inner world. I thought it would be fitting to meet her and dress the portrait of an artist known for capturing others.
Through her artistic evolution, Lola embodies transformative femininity. Emerging from Montréal’s creative scene with both editorial and candid projects, she distinguished herself in an industry still marked by gendered dynamics. Without discrediting the work of male photographers, there remains a historically charged image: the man behind the camera, the woman before it. But artists like Lola naturally rewrite this narrative, turning the gaze inward, reclaiming authorship, and transforming observation into dialogue.
Sabiha Çimen
PARIS PHOTO 2025
Pippa Garner
The 2025 Edition of Paris Photo showcased distinct female photographer’s work with it’s programme Elles x Paris Photo. As Fiona Rogers, Guest Curator of the 2023 Program noted : “Photography is a medium entangled within a historically complex power dynamic. These artists expand on the concept of photography to challenge otherness, and to provide a more equitable way of looking, representing, and recording.”
Seated on a Parisian terrasse towards the end of October, it is within this expanded framework that our conversation took place : an exchange on portraiture, femininity, and the timeless relationship between artist, subject, and self.
ON THE ART OF PORTRAITURE
LOLA KINGSLEY: Definitely. I’ve always been drawn to portraits, though I naturally prefer candid moments. People often tell me my work feels editorial malgré moi ; it is often unintentional and comes naturally.
LK : Professionally it’s been a blessing; it’s led to collaborations with JJJJound, Mitchell & Ness, I-D Korea, and others. But in my personal work, I’ve been searching for something more instinctive, something that breathes.
JJJOUND, 2025
Her 2024 solo exhibition Goodbye, This Is… marked this shift. The show, a visual diary of youth and transformation, explored the interplay between street culture, identity, and belonging.
"I wanted to capture these important experiences & encounters within these young communities," she says referring to the different subcultures she documented. "Not in a journalistic way, but in a candid one." When coming across these individuals in these big cities, photographing them, in a way, transforms them into "city characters". They become necessary factors in shaping local culture.
THE DOG AND HIS BONE, 2021
EXHIBITION FLYER
BENCH GYMNASTICS, 2024
TRUST, POWER AND THE ACT OF SEEING
SC: How do you navigate the dynamics between photographer and subject?
LK: You undeniably hold a certain power when taking portraits. The photographer controls the narrative, which is both a challenge and a responsibility. Without trust, that can become dangerous.
Lola Kinglsey, 2024
For Kingsley, human connection is central. “It’s easier to photograph someone when they are willing to reveal themselves to you” she says. “There are moments I wish I’d built more understanding and connection before shooting.” In her candid projects, she consciously slows down, privileging empathy over immediacy.
She lets me in on some future projects : “There’s someone in Montreal I find fascinating. I’ve wanted to photograph them for months, but first, I need to know them.”
CHANNELING FEMININITY THROUGH INTROSPECTION, NATURE AND LITERATURE
LOLA KINGSLEY, 2025
Recently, Kingsley has turned her questioning to nature. She explores and proposes, through unresolved yet pursed documentation, the idea of “a portrait of nature that is inherently feminine” with exhibitions like Of Earth, Skin & Stone (2025).
Reading has been a catalyst in this transformation. “Literature feels like collecting ideas,” she reflects. “You gather them, hold them, and later they resurface in unexpected ways.”
Her influences have shifted from the canonical male authors she first read - James Baldwin, Fernando Pessoa and Dostoievsky, for instance, to female voices such as Audre Lorde, Clarice Lispector, Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Susan Sontag, etc.
Her influences have shifted from the canonical male authors she first read - James Baldwin, Fernando Pessoa and Dostoievsky, for instance, to female voices such as Audre Lorde, Clarice Lispector, Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Susan Sontag, etc.
AUDREY LORDE
YOUR SILENCE WILL NOT PROTECT YOU
ON PHOTOGRAPHY
SUSAN SONTAG
This evolution parallels her self-perception. “Art allows me to express myself,” she says. “I ask not to be judged by what is seen on the exterior, but by what I create and through the practice that shapes it. My art has become my truest reflection.”
INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUES
Patti Smith by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1978
LK: Outside of Literature, I would love to collaborate with Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange). The sensorial quality of his work evokes a deep sensitivity in me. It invites me into a dreamlike space which encourages me to see, feel & imagine differently.
SC: And if someone could create work inspired by yours?
LK: Anyone that feels inspired. If my work drives someone to make work they deem important, that's more than enough.
SC : Tell me about an interesting parallel you have noticed between your work and someone else’s’ ?
LK : Patti Smith’s Just Kids became a foundational starting point for my body of work in Goodbye, this is.... She articulated the very feelings I was trying to evoke during that period of my life, and reading her gave me the language I didn’t yet have.
We further reflect on the mirror-like dialogue between Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe ; an iconic duo embodying photography and literature intertwined, a bit like the dual nature of Lola’s own process.
There’s something profoundly tactile about how she describes influence: for Kingsley, ideas are not only read or heard, but handled.
This brings us to the material dimension of her practice ; her fascination with the physicality of images, and the act of transforming them into art objects that can be held, passed on, and preserved.
A TRIBUTE TO MATERIALITY : ATUNBI & IKU
2025 marks the release of Kingsley's first zine : Atunbi & Iku published by Friends Edition. These two words are drawn from the Yoruba dialect and tribe of Southwest Nigeria and Benin and hold deep meaning :
But not as an end.
As a passage. A return.
Àtúnbí, rebirth, is the sacred echo that follows.
Ìkú is not a departure.
Àtúnbí is not an arrival.
Together, they are the rhythm of our becoming.
She tells me how deeply she values the material nature of print media, embracing the tactility of photography as an art object. “Physical media is integral to my process,” she explains. “It serves as an instrument of learning ; through the act of making, documenting, and preserving.”
Atunbi & Iku feels less like a product than a meditation: a conversation with nature, an introspective journey rendered tangible. “It’s about rediscovery,” she says, “about letting nature guide you back to yourself.” As those two words echo Kingsley's own heritage, they channel a deeper sense of artistic reflection.
LEGACY & LOOKING BACK
SELF PORTRAIT, 2024
When I mention Vivian Maier, amongst other historically famous photographers, her eyes light up.
LK: Maier is fascinating because she never claimed to be an artist. She just was. She reminds me that art doesn’t need validation to exist. It’s about being in tune with yourself and your environment.
To Kingsley, this is the essence of artistry: presence, sensitivity, humility. Photography, she says, is “the most natural medium to channel that synergy.”
CITIES, MOVEMENT AND BELONGING
View from Window, 2024
Emilie’s Room, 2021
With Dre, 2024
LK: All the time. But it’s scary. There’s a lot of pressure attached to leaving home—to succeed elsewhere. If it doesn’t work, it feels like failure. It’s a fear of the unknown… and there is always the ego.
"But one must always confront fear", she says.
Strongly recognized for their fearlessness, both these figures seem to serve as philosophical pillars to Kingsley who once more proves to be attentive to the legacies before her.
A RETURN TO THE INNER CHILD
LOLA KINGSLEY, 2025
LK: People tell me I need to adapt to my time. But maybe that’s my signature - channeling femininity by looking inward, through stories, through history, exploring archives in hopes of making new ones.
LK: Ultimately, I think artists are always trying to reconnect with their inner child - the one who sees without judgment, who learns, who’s endlessly curious. That’s where everything begins.
POSTSCRIPT
LOLA KINGLSEY’s work inhabits a delicate intersection of nostalgia, selfhood, and renewal. Whether through the lens of her camera or the pages of her zine, she explores what it means to look - with inquisitiveness, awareness, and humility. Her portraits speak with quiet authority, reclaiming sensitivity and contemplation as enduring strengths within a fast-moving visual culture.
Her signature lies not in aesthetic repetition, but in her capacity to distill emotion into form: to translate intimacy, history, and introspection into images that feel both personal and collective. She draws on a lineage of strong female figures before her, whose own ways of seeing inform her instinct to question, observe, and reframe. This ongoing dialogue with feminine influence deepens her practice, grounding her curiosity in a sense of inheritance and self-discovery.
In doing so, Kingsley reaffirms the power of her photography as an act of awareness: to see, to understand, and ultimately, to remember.
LOLA KINGSLEY, 2025
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2025
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PROFILE + PHOTOS : Lola Kingsley
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