This volume travels through the most important moments and crossroads in the lifetime and career of Christian Boltanski, which have led him into reflecting upon the outcome of some historical events during the twentieth century and on the need to reconsider appropriate representation methods.

History, histories and the statute of the image are the fulcrum of the conversation being proposed. In particular, this conversation deals with some fundamental themes: the difference between collective memory, recollection and oblivion; relations between the individual and the crowd; the entity of absence, intended as proof of a destroyed presence, but also as device for the reactivation of memory; the incidence of an isolated glance, that of the observer, upon whose primacy the history of western art has constructed its foundations.