Like many European artists of his era Boltanski has a key interest in representing World War II and its atrocities through his artistic medium.
One exhibition out of his many that I'm looking at is titled, 'Lessons of Darkness' which ran between December 9 1988 - February 12 1989. He uses found images of children which he discovers in family albums, school portraits, newspaper pictures, or passport pictures and then rephotographs them to memorialise everyday people. In the exhibition he hangs lights over the portraits to highlight but also obscure the faces because he doesn't want the people to be identified, more accepted as a mass of Jewish Children lost to a generation of war. His work serves as a monument to the dead, hinting at the Holocaust without naming it. Boltanski's work is all about the viewer remembering the tragedy of the Holocaust through being shown people who were subject to the events but without showing the event itself. I have connected his and my work together through this idea of memory, but my technique of presentation is opposite to his. Whereas he has achieved the idea of memory through showing the subject but not the event, I achieve my ideas of memory and creation through showing the outcome of an event but without showing any subject, this leaves it up to the viewer to create the past narrative.
