“These works electrified France's art world, even if Calle had not originally conceived them as art. Her pictures were enticingly enigmatic; her texts read like detective reports, or a psychiatrist's case notes, or even a Le Monde journalist's deadly prose.”
Jeffries, Stuart. "Sophie Calle: stalker, stripper, sleeper, spy." guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media Limited , 23 Sept. 2009. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/23/sophie-calle>.
“Raking through her emotional life for subjects, she has been compared to women artists including Emin and accused of cheap tricks. "Love, life and death - all of that is the most mundane material for artists. It amuses me because people often say, doesn't it bother you to show your private life? I say, well if you ruled out private life, you would have to eliminate all poetry.”
Chrisafis, Angelique. Calle, Sophie. "He loves me not” guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media Limited , 23 Sept. 2009. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/23/sophie-calle>.
“Sophie Calle (b. 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Sophie Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.
Sophie Calle questions and challenges the relationship between text and photography, private and public personae, truth and fiction, in a groundbreaking, utterly original way. Her photographic work evokes narrative, affect and emotion, touching the viewer as well as the possibilities and limitations of photography. In 2010 Sophie Calle has been selected as the 30th winner of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, in conjunction with the ceremony an exhibition of here work Sophie Calle - 2010 Hasselblad Award Winner was held at the Hasselblad Center at the Göteborg Museum of Art.
Sophie Calle is an artist who works with photographs and performances, placing herself in situations almost as if she and the people she encounters were fictional. She also imposes elements of her own life onto public places creating a personal narrative where she is both author and character. She has been called a detective and a voyeur and her pieces involve serious investigations as well as natural curiousity.
Although much of her work employs voyeurism, Sophie Calle has allowed her own life to be put on display as well. She became so intrigued by following her unwitting subjects that she wanted to reverse the relationship and become the subject herself. She asked her mother to hire a private detective to follow her, without the detective knowing that she had arranged it, with the hopes that his investigation would provide photographic evidence of her existence.”
For entire bibliography, go to http://www.egs.edu/faculty/sophie-calle/biography/
“Room with a view”
2003
Black and white print, frames (x2)
70 x 51 inches + 20 x 20 inches
“The breasts”
2001
Black and white print, aluminum, text, frames (x2)
47 ¼ x 63 inches + 19 ¾ x 19 ¾ inches
View of the exhibition "Prenez soin de vous" in 2008 at Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Site Richelieu, Paris (France)
View of the exhibition "Douleur Exquise" in 2007 at Luxembourg, European Capital of Culture, Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Sophie Calle's work is very intriguing to me. I'm not necessarily drawn to images themselves, but by her way of working. Calle is very much interested in people and in herself. She is constantly studying, not necessarily making art. She also switches roles between the watcher and the watched. She commonly uses excerpts from her own writing to further explain the work, which in my opinion, needs explanation, since the images are part of a whole narrative. The images that I have chosen to put on here are for different reasons. The first image is part of her "Sleepers" series, in which she gets strangers to sleep next to her and tell her stories. This series began as a study, not as art. She is an interesting person in general, not just an artist giving the media something to look at. She does it because she cares, because she obsesses. The second image is the documentation of the revelation of growing breasts. It is something that bothered her in her childhood, and she developed later on in life, not scared at all to show it. The last two images I selected are more for the presentation style, yet the projects themselves are also incredibly interesting. They both happen to be projects that emerged from breakups. These are both very intimate projects, and it takes a very strong woman to show that to the world. She took over a library in France to exhibit her "Take Care of Yourself" series, in which she allowed 107 women to read a breakup letter she recieved. In the last photograph, this architecture was built specifically for her exhibit, with turning walls, mesh fabric, and reflective walls that distort the human figure. These aspects are meant to further explain her conceptual ideas. Memories blending, distorting. Presentation style is a factor that I have been considering as well, and can definitely make or break a exhibit.
Interview:
Sophie Calle does not have her own webpage, but she is represented by:
Gallerie Emmanuel Perrotin
ARNDT
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