New Limited EditionsHello Museum

For sale inquiries, please email limitededitions@newmuseum.org.

Christian Boltanski relies on the photograph’s deceptive capacity to authenticate the existence of a thing, person, or event. The artificially aged tin biscuit box in this piece also suggests—along with a prewar snapshot of German schoolgirls—an archaeological find. A group photograph has been marked by hand, enlarged, and shrouded with white cloth. Each tin in the edition contains a different photograph. “Everything,” Boltanski has said, “possesses the power to connote. The more commonplace the object, the more profound its allusions can be.”

Details

L’Ecole de la Grosse Hamburger Straße, en 1938, 1991
Tin box and photographs
8 × 9 × 2 in (20.3 × 22.8 × 5 cm)

Edition of 40
Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York