Sophie Calle

The course material for Part Two has been influential in parallel to my change of project direction. The notes explore coincidence/street photography, chance encounters, found photography and accidents and in the first section we are introduced to the work of Sophie Calle.
I have spent the past two hours looking over Calle's work and am intrigued by her creativity and work ethics.

Sophie Calle.
Photograph by Craig McDean 2009 for Interview Magazine
Image found at: interviewmagazine.com 

Sophie Calle was born in Paris in 1953 and still lives and works there today. According to the ARDNT website, Calle has been actively photographing since the late 1970's "combining text, image and conceptual installations". ARDNT also states that "Her work amounts to a systematic laying bare of reality, whether it be her own or other people's, with a limited portion left to chance." Also "The documentary manner in which she presents her work suggests a high degree of factualness." 

Some of her most famous works include The Hotel (1981) where Calle was employed as a chambermaid and would document findings and photograph belongings of people staying in the 12 rooms that she was working in and Take Care of Yourself (2007) where Calle was dumped by email and sought responses to said email from 107 women of numerous professions, responding within their expertise and photographing the reactions of each one as they read it to accompany their responses.

Sophie Calle, The Hotel, Room 47, 1981, Photo: © Tate, London [2016]

Sophie Calle, Take Care of Yourself, 2007, Photo: © The Paula Cooper Gallery [2016]

Suite Venitienne (1980) was where Calle was introduced to a man by chance at a party. He announced he was moving to Venice where Calle decided to follow him. The project is her documentary of her surveillance of him through photographs and text in the form of diary entries.

 From Sophie Calle's Suite Venitienne 198, first published in 1979
Re-published by Siglio in 2015
Image found at SiglioPress.com

Calle also produced a very controversial project in 1983's The Address Book. Finding an address book on the street, Calle copied the entries and returned the original book to it's owner. Calle then contacted names from within the address book and interviewed each person to speak about their relationship with the owner, to find out more about him as a person, and then published each response as a weekly entry into the newspaper Libération between August 2nd and Sept 4th 1983 (Ulin, 2012). Speaking with John Preston of the Telegraph in 2013, Calle says that this was the only time that she has ever felt guilty about exploiting someone in her work. She recalls that " I really didn't think I had done anything to displease the man, but he reacted very badly." As Preston adds, "[the man reacted] so badly that in retaliation he got the paper to publish a nude photograph of Calle".

Even though my tutor offered up Calle's name in response to my own project and the connection of secret photographing, the course notes also ask us to respond to Calle's work; to judge whether she has been deceitful or intrusive in creating such works as I have mentioned. Looking at my own project, I feel there is a slight connection to Calle, but more in the way she photographs people on the street without their knowledge (as in Suite Venitienne). I must admit, I do have queries about photographing people unawares, however I don't feel like I am particularly intruding on their privacy at all. How many times can you account for walking down the high street and someone taking a photo in your direction that you know that you will be in? Whether it is aimed at you directly or indirectly, how would you know? Have you ever stopped to question the photographer? We are photographed millions of times every day via CCTV and we don't question it. I think if the project were to be published in the local media, I would feel worse about it but I don't feel that I am being that intrusive as I am not intent on identifying specific people, I am not following specific strangers or even enquiring as to what people are looking at on their phones. But I obviously feel there is some intrusion there, otherwise I would not be photographing people secretly.

In Calle's case, I do feel that there is some intrusion there. To photograph someones' address book is a pretty large invasion of privacy, but to then contact the people in it to enquire about the owner, and then publish the responses in a newspaper without his knowledge is a step too far in my opinion, and you can understand why he would get angry. To follow a stranger to another country, to enquire to people about his whereabouts and even get into his room is much like a stalker and definitely something I would never feel comfortable doing but it seems to work for Calle. Even in her Take Care of Yourself project, Calle says "He [the man who dumped her by email] didn't like it but he respected the idea." (Independent, 2009). Calle clearly uses major life events and chance encounters to create her work. Speaking with The Independent in 2009 she says " In my work I do things that I would never do in my life. In normal life I am much more discreet. I am not intrusive. I don't investigate my friend's lives. But if it's a project then it's different." It's as though Calle sees it that anything goes as long as it's for a project, but it's not necessarily how others would see it, which is why her work is so controversial.


References

ARDNT, (2016), Sophie Calle [Online], Available  at: http://www.arndtfineart.com/website/artist_937#exhibitions, [Accessed October 5th 2016]

Baker, H., (2015), Sophie Calle : Suite Venitienne [Online], Available  at: http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/7349/sophie-calle-suite-venitienne, [Accessed October 5th 2016]

Gentleman, A., (2004), The worse the break up, the better the art [Online], Available  at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/dec/13/art.art, [Accessed October 5th 2016]

Independent, (2009), Up Close (too) Personal: A Sophie Calle Retrospective [Online], Available    at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/up-close-and-too-personal-a-sophie-calle-retrospective-1809346.html, [Accessed October 5th 2016]

Jeffries, S,. (2009), Sophie Calle: stalker, stripper, sleeper, spy [Online], Available  at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/23/sophie-calle, [Accessed October 16th 2016]

Neri, L., (2009), Sophie Calle [Online], Available at: http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/sophie- calle#_, [Accessed October 5th 2016]

Preston, J., (2013), Artist Sophie Calle: Bonkers, in a good way [Online], Available  at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/10475158/Artist-Sophie-Calle-bonkers-in-a-good-way.html, [Accessed October 5th 2016]

Russo, E., (2015), Sophie Calle's Suite Venitienne: Following as performance and book [Online],  Available at: http://www.artcritical.com/2015/07/16/emmalea-russo-on-sophie-calle/, [Accessed  October 5th 2016]

Tate, (2016), Sophie Calle The Hotel, Room 47 [Online], Available  at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/calle-the-hotel-room-47-p78300, [Accessed October 5th 2016]

The Paula Cooper Gallery, (2009), Sophie Calle - Take Care of Yourself [Online], Available  at: https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/sophie-calle-take-care-of-yourself/installation-views, [Accessed October 5th 2016]

Ulin, D., (2012), Sophie Calle takes names in "The Address Book" [Online}, Available  at: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/20/entertainment/la-et-jc-sophie-calle-address-book-20121120, [Accessed October 5th 2016]