shinyslingback's art blog

amirahimage:

Monument: Les enfants de Dijon, 1985
Christian Boltanski

Gelatin silver and chromogenic development prints, and light fixtures
Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of the William J. Hokin Family, 2001.13

For Monument: Les enfants de Dijon (Monument: The children of Dijon), Boltanski requested photographs from 200 students at a school in Dijon, France. He rephotographed these pictures and installed them in a series of altars, each photograph framed with Christmas wrapping paper and bathed in the soft glow of surrounding lights. The contrast between the stark black-and-white photographs and the colorful patterns of the wrapping paper, as well as the muted lighting, create the somber atmosphere of a sacred site of contemplation and memory, evoking an unnamed tragedy.