Christian Boltanski. Réserve des Suisses Morts, 1991
Swiss newspaper are enlarged until the faces shown share the same distance in time from the events
are obscured, altering their context and meaning, and, as such, the artists do not portray their own
thereby managing to evoke the Holocaust without experiences in their work, but rather approach the
referring to it directly. As Van Alphen states, there subject indirectly. As James E. Young explains, for
is a clear Holocaust effect in the work, as evidenced these artists, “their subject is not the Holocaust
in “the sheer number of similar portraits, which so much as how they came to know it and how it
transforms the sense of individuality typically has shaped their inner lives”. (Young, 2000, p.
evoked by that genre into one of anonymity”. 3). It follows, then, that the work of these artists
Indeed, he continues, “the work can thus be seen as was inspired by a range of direct and indirect
a re-enactment of one of the defining principles of sources, including media publications and images,
the Holocaust: the transformation of subjects into testimonies, documents, and family accounts, and
objects”. (Van Alphen, 1997, p. 106). that it deals not only with the Holocaust but, more
Other particularly relevant examples include the
specifically, with the transmission of historical
works of Art Spiegelman and his graphic novel Maus memory. Many artists’ work also addresses their
(1991), which recounts the experiences of his father, own identity as descendants of survivors, and the
a Holocaust survivor, as well as his own story as a responsibility to keep their memory and history
son; David Levinthal’s Mein Kampf (1993–1994), alive. In this sense, the main theme of many of these
which recreates scenes from the atrocity using toy projects is ‘postmemory’ (Hirsch, 1997), referring
figures; and Shimon Attie’s project The Writing on to memory transmitted by the preceding generation
the Wall (1991–1992) in which the artist retrieves that has had such an importance, presence and
archive images of the everyday lives of the residents influence in a person’s life that they embrace the
of Berlin’s Jewish quarter and projects them onto memory as their own.
their location sixty years later, superimposing them
in both time and space. Moreover, all these works
overview
Rafael Goldchain’s photographic project I Am
My Family (2008) is an excellent example of an art
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