Bibliography

1. Dugid, Hannah. "Up Close and (too) Personal: A Sophie Calle Retrospective." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 23 Oct. 2011. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/up-close-and-too-personal-a-sophie-calle-retrospective-1809346.html>.

2. Ulin, David L. "Sophie Calle Investigates the Distance between Us in 'Suite Vénitienne'" Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 24 Mar. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-sophie-calle-suite-venitienne-20150324-story.html>.

3. Morgan, Stuart. "Frieze Magazine | Archive | Suite Vénitienne." Frieze Magazine RSS. Frieze, 1992. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/suite_venitienne/>.

4. Caligans, Marco. "Sophie Calle L'Hotel." People and Place. 18 May 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://peopleandplaceatoca.blogspot.com/2014/05/sophie-calle-lhotel.html>.

5. Jeffries, Stuart. "Sophie Calle: Stalker, Stripper, Sleeper, Spy." The Guardian. The Guardian, 23 Sept. 2009. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/23/sophie-calle>.

6. "The Address Book - Siglio Press." Siglio Press. Siglio Press, 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://sigliopress.com/book/the-address-book/>.

7. O'Neill-Butler, Lauren. "The Savage Detective: On Sophie Calle’s “Address Book” - The..." The Los Angeles Review of Books. Los Angeles Review of Books, 24 Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/the-savage-detective-on-sophie-calles-address-book>.

8. "Sophie Calle: Blind #14" (2000.409a-d) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2000.409a-d. (October 2006)

9. Dubin, Zan. "Insights of 'Blind' in Eye of the Beholder : Art: Sophie Calle Lets Those without Sight Speak of Beauty and Lets the Resulting Exhibition Speak for Itself." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 1995. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://articles.latimes.com/1995-10-20/entertainment/ca-59024_1_sophie-calle>.

10. Wilson, Megan. "Sophie Calle: Public Spaces-Private Places." Stretcher. Stretcher, 2001. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.stretcher.org/features/sophie_calle_public_spaces_-_private_places/>.

11. Dixon, Tim. "Open File: Sophie Calle & Paul Auster - Gotham Handbook." Open File: Sophie Calle & Paul Auster - Gotham Handbook. Blogger, 1 Feb. 2011. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://openfileblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/sophie-calle-paul-auster-gotham.html>.

12. Gentleman, Amelia. "The Worse the Break-up, The Better the Art." The Guardian. The Guardian, 13 Dec. 2004. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/dec/13/art.art>.

13. Chrisafis, Angelique. "He Loves Me Not." The Guardian. The Guardian, 15 June 2007. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/16/artnews.art>.

Latest Works and Conclusion

Sophie Calle's later pieces were primarily about her romantic entanglements and the resulting heartbreak. Her two-part exhibition Exquisite Pain (2003) was about a long journey she took from Moscow to Japan, hoping to meet up her lover on the way. She documented her travels with photography and wrote about how badly she wanted to see him, but he called her saying that he had found someone else from a hotel room in New Delhi. The photographs, letters, and other mementos in Part I of the exhibit are stamped with "91 days to unhappiness," "90 days to unhappiness," and so on counting down their eventual break-up.

Part I of Exquisite Pain (2003) by Sophie Calle

Part II of the exhibition was about dealing with the misery that came from Calle's abandonment. She recounted her story to 99 friends, family, and strangers, then asked them to relay the worst moments of their lives in return. She recorded all of their tragic stories and juxtaposed them with her break-up, which made it seem trivial and helped her cope with the situation. In her own words, "At the time, I took on this project more for therapeutic than for artistic reasons. I can't remember whether I was planning to use it all later on as material - I think I must have been because I conducted the process seriously and with rigour. I knew the project would stop when I got bored with talking about my pain or when I became disgusted and ashamed of the way that my banal love affair was nothing compared to the stories of greater unhappiness they were telling me." (source)

In 2004, Calle's text Exquisite Pain was adapted into a performance by theatrical company Forced Entertainment based in Sheffield, England.

Part II of Exquisite Pain (2003) by Sophie Calle

While Calle has created smaller pieces since then, her largest recent exhibition was Take Care of Yourself at the 2007 Venice Biennial. This project chronicles a painful split with her boyfriend that involved him breaking up with her via email. She asked friends, strangers, linguistic experts, an etiquette consultant, a copywriter, a chess player, a forensic scientist, and several other women to analyze and criticize the letter, which ended with the words "take care of yourself." She said that "The idea came to me very quickly, two days after he sent it. I showed the email to a close friend asking her how to reply, and she said she'd do this or that. The idea came to me to develop an investigation through various women's professional vocabulary." (source) Photographs of women reading the email are displayed with their assessment of its contents, giving them the power and adding new meaning to the dismissive nature of the break-up. 

Take Care of Yourself (2007) by Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle's most recent work provides a clear image of her maturation as a person. She's graduated from stalking one-night stands to analyzing and tearing down long-term relationships, giving herself agency in the process. Sophie Calle is simultaneously straightforward and confusing, endearing and alarming, powerful and weak. She is so closely tied to her pieces that many of them are autobiographical in nature and she's unashamed to air her dirty laundry for all to see. Calle's legacy is so enduring that in 2001 Australian art student Vienna Parreno legally changed her name to Sophie Calle and displayed recreations of her work for her senior thesis. According to her artist statement she "didn't know what to do with herself." One has to wonder what the real Sophie Calle would think, as her entire career is based on the changing identities of those around her and knowing exactly who she wanted to be. 

Portrait of Sophie Calle

Further Works and Worldly Travels

While Sophie Calle continued to explore documentation of people's lives throughout her career, her work matured in many ways after publication of The Address Book. For her 1986 project The Blind, Calle photographed several people born without sight and asked them to describe their "image of beauty." (source) Answers ranged from one boy's imagining of the color green to a girl's description of running her hands over a Rodin's statue of a voluptuous woman. Calle also revealed that she didn't take all of the pictures herself, saying "For example, a woman spoke of a countryside in Cardiff and the woman took the photograph herself. She pointed the camera in the direction of where she thought the beauty was and took the photograph herself. The man who said the most beautiful thing he had seen was his son took the picture of his son himself." (source) This particular body of work is a poignant and touching look at our individual ideas of beauty.

The Blind (1986) by Sophie Calle

During the 1990's, Calle traveled to various parts of the world and recorded her experiences and those of the people she met there. In 1996 she visited Jerusalem and based an entire exhibit on the Orthodox Jewish tradition of the eruv, calling it Public Places-Private Spaces. The description of an eruv is as follows:

"The eruv is a physical and symbolic enclosure created by stringing galvanized steel wire from poles in and around a Jewish community. This practice is used as a way of stretching the Talmudic law that prohibits the transfer of objects outside of the home on Sabbath (every Friday at sun down until the following day at sun down) by defining the space within the eruv as “home.” The ritual of honoring the eruv is quite involved and in Jerusalem it includes a weekly assessment by an “eruv inspector” to insure that the lines have not been damaged. If any gaps are spotted, the repairs must be completed before the beginning of Sabbath, otherwise an announcement is made by rabbis throughout the city that the space is not protected." (source)

In addition to photographing the giant eruv in the middle of the city, Calle asked both Palestinian and Israeli residents to take her to places that were meaningful to them and describe why. Despite massive conflict between these two groups, this frames the locations in a personal context rather than a hostile and political one. The anonymous descriptions were displayed alongside a map of Jerusalem in the Collection of Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme, Paris.

eruv (1996) by Sophie Calle

In 1992, Calle traveled across America in a collaboration with the photographer Gregory Shepard. No Sex Last Night is a film about the experience of traveling with a stranger and begins with Calle's burial of her close friend Herve Guibert. The journey ends at a drive-through wedding window in Las Vegas, where the two artists are married. The odd dissonance in their relationship can be seen in the following video clip, where they speak aimlessly to each other through the camera.

The two lived together for a short time after the marriage, but broke up when Calle discovered letters addressed to another woman called "H." The movie is an uncomfortably close look at the relationship between Shepard and Calle and displays two different viewpoints on the meaning of the journey and where they think they will ultimately end up. 

Calle traveled to New York and developed a friendship with writer and filmmaker Paul Auster, who came up with a guide for her to live by during her time in the city. The sarcastic title was Personal Instructions for SC on How to Improve Life in New York City (Because she asked...), which later resulted in The Gotham Handbook (1999). Instructions included are "smile at and talk to strangers, distribute sandwiches and cigarettes to the homeless and to 'cultivate a spot.'" (source) Calle accepted the challenge and commandeered a phone booth on the street, painting it green and providing friendly services to random passerby. Calle cleaned the booth and restocked it with water bottles, cigarettes, flowers, cash, and notepads on which strangers could write their opinion of the project. She documented the entire experience and compiled it to create The Gotham Handbook. 

Image from The Gotham Handbook (1999) by Sophie Calle

In my opinion, these later pieces are her most interesting. As Calle grew older, she relied less on shock value and exploitation and created work that was both sincere and concerned. While still self-centered, her work reflected on the disenfranchised and gave a voice to people who are often overlooked.

Fame and Controversy

Sophie Calle is no stranger to controversy. Her lackadaisical approach to privacy shocked the public and attracted even more attention to her work. She began stripping in a Pigalle club to make money and test her own psychological strength, then published a book of photos from this time called The Striptease (1989) against her father's wishes. She also had a tendency to ramble in interviews, one time talking to a journalist for nearly ten hours, and often said that she became an artist to "seduce her father." (source)

Images from The Striptease (1989) by Sophie Calle

All of her polarizing actions came to a head with her 1983 work, The Address Book. In the words of Calle, "I found an address book on the Rue des Martyrs . . . I will contact the people whose names are noted down. I will tell them, 'I found an address book on the street by chance. Your number was in it. I’d like to meet you.' . . . Thus, I will get to know this man through his friends and acquaintances. I will try to discover who he is without ever meeting him." (source) Transcriptions of her conversations with the people contacted from the address book were published in a French paper, Liberation, in a series of 28 articles. She also included images of the book owner's favorite activities as deduced from interactions with his acquaintances. 

With minimal information Calle created a surprising portrait of a man she never knew, although he soon discovered her actions and was revealed to be the documentary filmmaker Pierre Baudry. He threatened to sue for invasion of privacy and demanded that the newspaper publish a nude photo of Calle, which they did in order to placate him. While she thinks the project went too far, Calle also stated, "But if it had to be redone, I would redo it because the excitement is stronger than the guilt.” (source)

2012 English publication of The Address Book (1983) by Sophie Calle

The Address Book is still Calle's most famous work and threw her into the spotlight, turning her into a celebrity. The character Maria from Paul Aster's novel Leviathan is loosely based on her. This is especially obvious in the following excerpt: 

"She would set out in the dark, knowing absolutely nothing, and one by one she would talk to all the people listed in the book. By finding out who they were, she would begin to know something about the man who had lost it. It would be a portrait in absentia, an outline drawn around an empty space . . . . She wanted encourage people to open up to her when she saw them, to tell her stories about enchantment and lust and falling in love, to confide their deepest secrets in her."

It is clear that Calle knew the implications of publishing The Address Book. She said herself that she became afraid of what was doing and agreed to only republish the work after Pierre Baudry's death. Even so, she saw the project through to the end and thus created an insightful commentary on the role our friends and family play in forming our identities. 

The Early Works of Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle spent seven years traveling after she completed her schooling in Paris, France. When she returned, she sought to rediscover the area by stalking and photographing locals, learning about their lives and daily habits in the process. Her first book, Suite Venitienne,  Please Follow me was the result of her following a man from Paris to Venice for 12 days, photographing him in the process. According to her, “At the end of January 1980, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of our conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice. I decided to follow him.” (source) The man is known only as Henri B. and the work is presented as a diary with pictures to accompany her description of the subject and his activities. At one point, she even attempted to rent the room he vacated in order to sleep in the same bed. (source)

Images from Suite Venitienne (1980) by Sophie Calle

One of Calle's next works, The Shadow (1981) continued to explore the theme of watching and being watched. She asked her mother to hire a private detective to follow her and document her activities, although she didn't know which days he would be doing so. For several days, she recorded her own movements and activities and walked to places around Paris that held deep meaning for her, effectively leading the detective and reversing their roles. The final exhibit included the detective's observations as well as her own, inviting onlookers to compare and contrast their respective recordings. Calle essentially made herself a victim of the stalking activity she had inflicted on somebody else, making a keen observation about the role of the spectator and further exploring an idea she would continue to touch on throughout her career.

Images taken of Sophie Calle for The Shadow (1981) by Sophie Calle 

Clearly, Calle's work so deeply involved invading the lives of others that it bordered on illegal. This is due partially to her efforts to understand the city she had left for so long, which is especially clear in the execution of her next project, The Hotel (1981). This involved taking a temporary job as a chambermaid at a hotel and photographing the personal belongings of several occupants. According to her, she "spent one year to find the hotel, I spent three months going through the text and writing it, I spent three months going through the photographs, and I spent one day deciding it would be this size and this frame...it's the last thought in the process." (source) Along with the photos, she included descriptions of what she imagined the guests' lives were like based on the personal items she found. 

Images from L'hotel (1981) by Sophie Calle

It's difficult to imagine any of these pieces coming to fruition today, as everyone records their lives and travels so thoroughly that Sophie's deception and subsequent documentation of personal goods would have been discovered fairly quickly. Calle truly pushed the limits of what she could get away with, especially with a piece that will be discussed in my next blog post. 

An Introduction to Sophie Calle's Life and Works

Sophie Calle Portrait

Sophie Calle is an artist who has always strived to be subversive. She was born a French citizen on October 9th, 1953 and has been stunning the world with her photography, installation art, and writing ever since. She has visited and shown her work in Russia, America, Belgium, Brazil, the Netherlands, and several other countries. Calle's most recent major work was Take Care of Yourself (2007), and was a way for her to deal with and overcome a break-up with her boyfriend. She has continued to re-design and publish older works since then and is widely considered one of the most important modern artists of our time.

Take Care of Yourself (April 9th-June 6th, 2009) by Sophie Calle, Paula Cooper Gallery, NY

Sophie Calle's art emphasizes what it means to be human and is unapologetically feminine, laying bare female anatomy (as in her 2001 piece, The Breasts) and documenting her own life and the lives of others. Her work also incorporates a voyeuristic aspect and is often seen as controversial as a result, as in one case where she followed a man she met in Venice and photographed him without his knowledge. Many of her pieces incorporate herself and her belongings as a subject, such as when she invited strangers to sleep in her bed (The Sleepers, 1979) and her documentation of a road trip taken with American photographer Gregory Shepard (No Sex Last Night, 1996). Address Book (1983) is perhaps her most notorious work, as it generated lots of controversy and eventually resulted in her being sued for invasion of privacy by the documentary filmmaker Pierre Baudry. In 2012 it was published in its entirety for the first time. 

The Address Book, by Sophie Calle. Published by Siglio, 2012

In conclusion, this blog will aim to explore Calle's works and the meaning behind them as well as how they reflect on the nature of the artist herself. This quote from Calle, recorded during a 2011 interview, is a great summation of her body of work:

"In my work I do such things that I would never do in my life. In normal life I am much more discreet. I am not intrusive, I do not investigate my friend's lives. But if it's a project then it's different." (source)