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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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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
Twice
Photograph
Dies
Actually
Earth
Recognizes

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Every time I ask questions about sex, I always end up asking questions about death.
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Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt
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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.
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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.
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I never take photographs myself. I don’t feel like a photographer, more like a recycler
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Photography is used to give evidence, and the evidence is always deceiving.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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