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)