Chris-an Boltanski shows the shocking reality of the past. His work portrays the faces of Jewish schoolchildren taken in Vienna in 1931, serve as a forceful reminder of the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis. Boltanskis work that followed, such as Reserve Boltanski filled whole rooms and corridors with items of worn clothing as a way of promp-ng an involuntary associa-on with the clothing depots at concentra-on camps. The faces of children are faces of innocence, colliding with the sinister past that once happened. Even though this tainted past is known, it has never been so graphic. The use of children reinforces how vulnerable these children were and how there was no one to fight their corner, only the unknown. The use on contrast of black and white is a harsh emphasis on the purity mee-ng the sinister. Boltanski’s work ‘reserve’, shows a variety of colours of neatly piled up clothes, without the photographs of the children in the shadows of the work, they are just pieces of fabric. However, pu`ng the faces of innocent children in the background the clothes become dainty pieces of fabric and the echo's of fragile minds.
Chris-an Boltanski Faces and Reserve