Altar to the Chases High School
シャス高校の祭壇
- Birth Year
- 1944
- Death Year
- 2021
- Date
- 1987
- Technique, Material, Format
- 12 black and white photographs, 31 metal boxes, 12 clamp-on lamps
- Dimension
- 245.0 x 210.0 x 23.0 cm
- Category
- Photograph or Moving Image by ForeignPhotographer/Artist
- Inventory Number
- 92-PHF-001
Christian Boltanski was born in 1944 shortly after the liberation of Paris from Nazi Germany and near the end of World War II. His father was a Jew who had been persecuted by the Nazis. The stories he heard about the Holocaust from his father, and about the war from his father’s friends became strongly engraved in his heart as memories to be passed on. The variously sized photographs in this work are enlargements from the last class photo taken at the Jewish Chases High School in Vienna, in 1931. The stacks of old biscuit tins look like an altar housing each person’s mementos, and they suggest the horror of the Holocaust that the students would soon encounter.
(KIMURA Eriko)