Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle is a notable French artist born on October 9, 1953, in Paris. Her diverse body of work encompasses photography, video, and performance art, exploring profound themes such as exposure, pain, and absence. Notably, Calle's artistic approach often involves elements of voyeurism and surveillance, leading her to create immersive projects that blur the lines between her personal experiences and those of others. One of her significant early works, "Les Dormeurs," invited individuals to sleep in her bed, resulting in intimate photographs and dialogues. Calle's project "Suite Vénitienne" documented her experience following a man to Venice, further emphasizing her interest in the dynamics of privacy and public life.
Throughout her career, Calle has engaged with personal narratives, as seen in "Exquisite Pain," which explores her feelings of loss after a failed romantic encounter. Her retrospective work has gained recognition over the years, culminating in several prestigious awards, including the Hasselblad Award in 2010. Calle has also taught at various universities and continues to influence contemporary art through her unique blend of text and imagery, often presented in book form. Beyond her artistic endeavors, she has shared insights into her personal life, including her marriage and experiences with grief, which have informed her artistic journey.
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Sophie Calle
Artist, writer, photographer, professor
- Born: October 9, 1953
- Place of Birth: Paris, France
Significance: Sophie Calle is a French artist. Her artwork includes photographs, videos, and performance art pieces and focuses on themes such as exposure, pain, and absence. Calle's work has been shown at museums worldwide, and she has taught at several universities.
Background
Sophie Calle was born in Paris, France, on October 9, 1953. Her father, Robert Calle, was an oncologist and art collector, and her mother, Monique Findler, was a book critic and press agent. She also had a brother, Antoine. After high school, Calle's father paid a man to fake a degree for his daughter, so she could instead travel the world. Over the course of seven years, she visited China, the United States, and Mexico. Calle became interested in photography. She was inspired by her father's collection of prints by American photographer Duane Michals. She returned to Paris at the end of the 1970s. Her mother had just married for a third time, so Calle chose to live with her father.
Calle decided to pursue art and photography as a full-time career. She was out one day and followed an individual for inspiration. She called this method "private games." Calle used intrusion, voyeurism, and surveillance as art methods in the years that followed. At the same time, a friend asked to sleep in Calle's bed, and she obliged. She came up with an idea to invite people to her home to sleep in her bed. She used both friends and strangers in the project. She photographed the individuals and wrote down what they said. The resulting project was Les Dormeurs (The Sleepers; 1979).
Calle then revisited her original project. She continued to follow people and snap photos of them. Calle followed a man named Henri B. over the course of twelve days. She lost him in a crowd in Paris, and then by chance, she met him at a party that same night. During their conversation, he told her that he was going to Venice, so she decided to follow him there. She used a disguise to trail him but was eventually exposed when he recognized her by her eyes. Calle collected the black-and-white images and short accompanying text entries in the 1979 book Suite Vénitienne. Most times, she did not receive permission to photograph her subjects. This discomfort came across in her work; it blurred the line between privacy and public life. The project allowed Calle to become the subject of her own work. By exposing the lives of strangers, she in turn revealed herself.
Life's Work
In 1983, Calle found an address book on the street. She photographed it and then called the contacts in the book to get to know the owner. She then published a multimedia installation of the results called L'Homme au carnet (The Address Book). Calle's next project was even more revealing. She took a job as a stripper in a club and turned the images of herself into the book The Striptease (1989). She paired the nudes with old cards that her parents had saved from when she was born. Also in 1989, Calle had her first solo exhibit at Fred Hoffman Gallery in Los Angeles.
Several of Calle's projects were inspired by being scorned by a lover. Her 2003 book Exquisite Pain contained photographs of a trip she took to New Delhi, India. Her lover was supposed to meet her there but failed to make the trip. Calle took a photo every day and jotted down her feelings about how much she was looking forward to seeing her partner. She also included painful stories from other people she met in India. One woman shared her story about giving birth to a child that had died; a boy recounted the moment when he learned his father died. Calle said these stories helped her with her own grief. Calle continued to touch on very personal moments in her life. Her work Pas pu saisir la mort (Couldn't Capture Death) shows the last moments of her mother's life before she died in 2006.
A failed relationship influenced another of Calle's work. She received a break-up email from her boyfriend that closed with the line "Take care of yourself," which became the title of the 2007 work. She asked 107 women to analyze and answer the email. The women used various mediums such as text, song, and dance in response. The work became very popular and toured for more than ten years.
Calle also delved into performance art. In 2012, she spent thirty hours reading diaries written by her mother. For another piece of performance art, Calle and her friend, Laurie Anderson, a fellow artist, exchanged marriage vows in a faux ceremony in 2015.
In June 2017, Calle showed her first retrospective in the United States at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. An October 2017 show in Paris centered on hunting. Calle created images of men hunting women for the exhibit. In addition to her career as an artist, Calle has held various teaching positions at universities around the world, including the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland; University of California, San Diego; and Mills College, Oakland, California. In 2021, Calle published The Hotel.
Impact
Calle has left a mark in the art world with her array of art in different mediums. Many of her works are reliant on text, and much of her artwork is presented in books rather than in exhibits. It took a few decades for Calle to receive notice and be recognized with retrospectives on her work. She won the Hasselblad Award for photography in 2010 and was shortlisted for the 2017 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. In 2019, she was named a recipient of the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship. In 2024, Calle received the Praemium Imperiale.
Personal Life
Calle married Greg Shephard, with whom she collaborated on the video project No Sex Last Night (Double Blind) in 1992. The relationship ended shortly thereafter, and the two divorced. Calle collects taxidermy animals and has a large collection in her home. After her father died in 2014, Calle had a heart attack and said she felt too lost to do any work after this time. This lasted for about two years, and she eventually began creating art again.
Bibliography
Greenberger, Alex. "Sophie Calle, Doris Salcedo Among Winners of $105,000 Praemium Imperiale Award." ARTNews, 10 Sept. 2024, www.artnews.com/art-news/news/praemium-imperiale-award-2024-sophie-calle-doris-salcedo-1234717155/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
Jeffries, Stuart. "Sophie Calle: Stalker, Stripper, Sleeper, Spy." Guardian, 23 Sept. 2009, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/23/sophie-calle. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
O'Hagan, Sean. "Strangers, Secrets and Desire: The Surreal World of Sophie Calle." Guardian, 29 Nov. 2017, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/04/strangers-secrets-and-desire-the-surreal-world-of-sophie-calle. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
Schilling, Mary Kaye. "The Fertile Mind of Sophie Calle." New York Times Style Magazine, 10 Apr. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/t-magazine/sophie-calle-artist-cat-pregnant.html. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
"Sophie Calle." Artnet, www.artnet.com/artists/sophie-calle/biography. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
"Sophie Calle." Artsy, www.artsy.net/artist/sophie-calle. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
"Sophie Calle." Guggenheim, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/sophie-calle. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
Ulin, David L. "Sophie Calle Investigates the Distance between Us in 'Suite Vénitienne.'" Los Angeles Times, 24 Mar. 2015, beta.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-sophie-calle-suite-venitienne-20150324-story.html. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.
Wiseman, Eva. "Sophie Calle: 'What Attracts Me Is Absence, Missing, Death…'" Guardian, 2 July 2017, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jul/02/sophie-calle-art-interview-what-attracts-me-is-absence-missing-death. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.