Sophie Calle

You might not know it from looking at her work, but French artist Sophie Calle insists that she is a fairly happy person. Well, she is now, anyway. Over the last two decades, Calle has made it her business to follow, peek into, and outright spy on the lives of people she barely knows, with results that both illustrate human vulnerability and tend not infrequently to pathos….

The Shadow’, 1981. Photographs and text

The Blind

“For ‘The Hotel,’ I 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.”

When a boyfriend broke-up with her by email, French artist Sophie Calle asked 107 women to read the letter and to analyse it according to their professional interest. It was set to music, re-ordered by a crossword-setter, performed by an actress, and probed by a forensic psychiatrist, amongst others…