L’ANNÉE TERRIBLE

Arno Gisinger’s large-format photographies show objects of memory from so-called reliquary caskets, which arose in the immediate aftermath of the suppression of the Paris Commune. They are preserved at the Musée d’art et histoire in Saint-Denis, near Paris. In an extraordinary manner, the objects draw an alternative social history of the 1871 events, while simultaneously serving as the expression of a specific commemorative culture from a contemporary point of view. The visitors peer into the depth of the space from the theatre hall balcony. The semi-opaque pictures are attached to a draw-line, animated by a special kind of lighting, akin to Louis Daguerre’s historical diorama. Thus emerges a spatial overall view assembled from disparate fragments.