Inventaire des objets ayant appartenu à une femme de Bois-Colombes

Christian Boltanski
Inventaire des objets ayant appartenu à une femme de Bois-Colombes

Photographs: Christian Boltanski

Publisher: CNAC

48 pages

Pictures: 310

Year: 1974

Comments: Softcover. 210 x 140 mm. First edition, 1974. Included in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol. II, p. 154-155. Bob Calle: Christian Boltanski, Livres d'artiste 1969-2007, pp. 38-39. A bit sunned on top of the cover but the copy is in great condition and very well preserved. Scarce collectible copy with the original CNAC invitation paper inside.

Boltanski uses “photographs as a memorializing agent, to make a record of an individual life, as in his exhibition and artist’s book Inventaire des Objets Ayant Appartenu a une Femme de Bois-Colombes” (Parr & Badger II, 136). The title translates to Inventory of Objects Which Belonged to a Woman of Bois-Colombes (a suburb of Paris), and it is one of a series of four books, for each of which he selected a person at random and then photographed all of their worldly goods. This is a “record of a life defined by personal possessions… a biography… Boltanski details the possessions of an anonymous life, and beyond the artistic its aim is essentially social, even sociopolitical…the result is impersonal and objective, and yet intensely moving. Boltanski is demonstrating the power of the archive and the catalogue, the survey that at some point becomes surveillance.

Published on the occasion of the exibition "Boltanski - Monory" at "Festival d'automne" in Paris.