Product Description
First edition, first printing. Hardcover. Gray cloth-covered boards with title stamped in gray and red on cover. Installation “Dernières Années” by Christian Boltanski. Foreword (in Finnish, Swedish and English) by Risto Niemenen. Essay (in Finnish, Swedish and English) by Michael Glasmeier. Interview with Boltanski (in Finnish, Swedish and English) by Jan Kaila. Includes a biography and exhibition history. 88 pp., with 19 tritone plates beautifully printed as full-bleed two-page spreads by Erikoispaino, Helsinki. 13-1/8 x 10 inches. Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Christian Boltanski: Night in August,” 22 August — 4 October, 1998, at the Helsinki Festival. Christian Boltanski changed everything for a period of time in the 1970s and 1980s. That he continues to contribute meaningfully to the dialogue surrounding accumulation, archives, and loss is somewhat remarkable. His assembled collections, not quite typologies, demonstrate a humility and sensitivity to the suffering of, for instance, Jewish people devastated by the holocaust. He created shrines of remembrance, tacit souvenirs, where in their wake were only numbing statistics. Although Boltanski never really addresses the issue of anti-Semitism directly — it is always oblique and general in interviews — his work assumes a collective responsibility for some of history’s greatest atrocities.
