Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski uses photography to evoke the past in his work; particularly relating to collective memory  of the Holocaust. Boltanksi is mainly interested in the tragedies of the Holocaust, and uses photographs; often of Jewish children, to serve as a reminder to the viewer of the horrors that occurred during the Holocaust. Boltanksi works with a wide range of media comprising of sculpture, installation, photography, film and painting. Boltanski’s installations awaken memories of the Holocaust; whether it is that these memories are personal, collective, real, invented, or imagined by the viewer. The installations usually comprise of close-up photographs (of Holocaust victims, we presume); which are found photographs that Boltanski has re-photographed, cropped and enlarged, causing the facial features to lose clarity – similar to the blurry nature that our mental visualisations of a memory might have. The photographs are displayed with black desk lamps placed very close to the images, which aim their light right at the centre of the faces, giving us sinister ideas of torture and interrogation. Boltanski then adds sound, light and objects to awaken our senses and cause involuntary associations with the Holocaust. Boltanski’s added objects might include clothes, which are evoke an emotional response as we presume them to be the clothes of the people photographed. The clothes match the photographs as they appear archival in nature. Boltanski deals with memory by presenting documentation of survivors’ lives: - their clothes, their photographs, their possessions, which he describes as ‘small memory’. His installations are almost like altarpieces; their use of candles and shrine-like display making us associate them with a commemoration of death. 

In The Storehouse, Boltanski displays seven enlarged photographs of young girls resting on piles of unlabeled biscuit tins containing scraps of fabric. Archives, 1988, is of a similar nature; in which Boltanski displays thirty photographs, each atop a biscuit tin with an individual lamp. Both works appear to be an archive, or perhaps a memorial, of Holocaust victims’ lives. The biscuit tins, which in the past were often used as a safe and easily locatable place to keep the family documents, are displayed, weathered and rusty; having connotations with the past and the preservation/store of memory. The photographs are black-and-white, blurry and enlarged, appearing to be old and faded. Boltanski uses titling to suggest possible meanings to the viewer. The titles of two of his works, The Storehouse, which could be describing memory itself, and Archives, both refer to documentation of the past. This is further emphasised by the aged biscuit tins and faded photographs. The work becomes about collective memory because of the sense of anonymity. Unlike Goldin’s photographs, where the viewer is looking at the artist’s own personal memories, here the viewer is confronted with the memories of anonymous people. The faces are intentionally blurred so that their features lose definition and become unrecognisable. The volumes of unlabeled biscuit tins also add to the idea of a collection of unnamed people.

Boltanski doesn’t actually use ‘true’ images; - the photographs of supposed Holocaust victims are in fact of random school children, which are from magazines and newspapers, and other found sources. Boltanski then edits them in a way to forge an aged quality to the image, making viewers think they are old photographs. In my own work I am interested in editing photographs so that the viewer believes them to be something that they are not. I am not trying to create a fake ‘archive’ of a past event in the same way Boltanski does, but I do want my photographs to appear general enough that viewers can attach their own memories to them. Boltanski blurs the facial features of people in his photographs, which helps to add anonymity to the piece; making it more relatable to collective memory. This is a technique that I could use myself when I am using images of people in my work. Although I am interested in Boltanski’s work because it relates to collective memory and uses photography, I don’t want to display my work in the same way. Boltanski focuses heavily on the ‘archive’ and his work is very static in nature. What I want to do is create pieces of work that portray what we might mentally visualise when recalling a memory. It needs to appear more fleeting and have more life than Boltanski’s.