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.