Christian Boltanski

Entre-temps (Between-times) combines photos of Boltanski at different ages. Originally projected in a loop on a plastic curtain for its first exhibition at he Yvon Lambert gallery in 1996, it is presented now on a string curtain. We see the artist age and then returning to the childhood in a never-ending cycle.

Robert Gardner has known Boltanski since the 1970s, when he invited him to the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard as a visting artist, and the following years since Boltanski has become a major figure in the art world. Gardner and photographer Michael Hutcherson travelled to Paris to make a film about Boltanski and the PERSONNES installation process.

Boltanski created "Animitas" in the Atacama Desert, a location steeped in history. The title of the work comes from the name given by Chileans to the religious altars erected on roadsides to mark the spot where an accident occurred. Tiny bells attached to long rods sway and tinkle in the wind. The artist produced three other "Animitas", in locations that are symbolic to him : the north of Quebec, the Dead Sea and the Island of Teshima.

In his studio, in his car, Gérald Fox follows the elusive Boltanski who, in his installations, makes use of portraits, newspaper clippings, magazines, family albums. The photographic approach, endlessly recomposed, proceeds by juxtaposition and accumulation. Each shot, framed in black, is lit by visible bulbs, the mass effect restoring the individual: walls of votive images that question the memory, our dark side, the inevitable passage of time, the traces left behind. Between autofiction and reality, Boltanski: artist or maker (of beauty)?

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.