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The more you work, the less you exist. I believe (at least, I used to believe, because I no longer think this is entirely true) that the artist is like someone carrying a mirror in which everyone can look and recognize themselves, so that the person who carries the mirror ends up being nothing.

Christian Boltanski

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Christian Boltanski
Age: 76 †
Born: 1944
Born: September 6
Died: 2021
Died: July 14
Conceptual Artist
Filmmaker
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
Sculptor
Visual Artist
7e arrondissement de Paris
Krisṭyan Bolṭansḳi
Amicale des te moins
Thinking
Persons
Least
Carrying
Like
Person
Less
Carrie
Look
Everyone
Mirror
Nothing
Artist
Entirely
Looks
True
Mirrors
Work
Ends
Recognize
Believe
Someone
Exist
Think
Used
Longer
Carries

More quotes by Christian Boltanski

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The science about life is very optimistic. Every second, four people in the world die, and six are born. This is optimistic.
Christian Boltanski
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We all die twice - once when we actually die and once when no one on earth recognizes our photograph.
Christian Boltanski
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Photography is used to give evidence, and the evidence is always deceiving.
Christian Boltanski
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There are very few times in creation in your life. One time is when you become an adult, one time is when your parents die, and the other time is when you are very old.
Christian Boltanski
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I never take photographs myself. I don’t feel like a photographer, more like a recycler
Christian Boltanski
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Every time I ask questions about sex, I always end up asking questions about death.
Christian Boltanski
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We're painting the same people all our life - it's just the way we look at them that changes. If you experience trauma, you can speak about it in so many different ways. You can speak about landscape, you can speak about your food it's always different. Trauma is the beginning of life as an artist.
Christian Boltanski
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Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt
Christian Boltanski
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In most of my photographic pieces I have manipulated the quality of the evidence that people assign to photography, in order to subvert it, or to show that photography lies - that what it conveys is not reality but a set of cultural codes.
Christian Boltanski
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I've filled my whole life trying to preserve the memory of living, in the fight against dying. Perhaps the only thing I've done, since stopping death is impossible, is to show this fight. The fight itself does not satisfy us either.
Christian Boltanski
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You are what you are because your parents made love at that exact moment, and if they made love one second after you would be different.
Christian Boltanski
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The photo replaces the memory. When someone dies, after a while you can't visualize them anymore, you only remember them through their pictures.
Christian Boltanski
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When I was four or five years old, I heard a lot of stories about the Holocaust because both my parents were survivors. I'm sure that was very important in my life. My father snuck out from under the floorboards to make love to my mother. I can't imagine why they kept me.
Christian Boltanski
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The fact that you were born means that there are no other children born because of you – you’ve killed them in a way.
Christian Boltanski
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I think it is very important to know that we are going to die. Now we refuse the fact of dying. There was once serenity in dying where you had all your children around you in a ceremony and would utter your last words with something like, 'I love the sky'.
Christian Boltanski
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The sole fact of having a school to train creative people is absolute lunacy... The idea of 'pedagogical vision' is ignoble, it has nothing to do with art, it's contrary to art. I really believe in teaching, despite what I say.
Christian Boltanski