Sophie Calle is an enigma. She is an artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker yet doesn't work exclusively in any of these areas. She has become famous for her work in photography but her objects and later films have drawn equal attention — work that carries with it the curiosity of a detective who chases ghosts. Invariably, she is known to makes things that are as much about her as they are about others. A reputation clearly described in a recent interview with Stuart Jeffries for The Guardian. When asked her age she then continued to explain the story of her life for "maybe 10 hours" she said. "I can talk about my life endlessly."
With nearly all Calle's photographs and installations, their completion only brings with it more stories, revelations, truths and half-truths. "Exquisite Pain," her first show in Japan nearly 14 years ago, was also held at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. It depicted the end of a 92-day journey to Japan taken in 1984, and how at a stop in New Dehli, her then-lover who had agreed to meet her there, never showed up. As a way of dealing with and healing from this rejection, she asked other women to recount their own tales of suffering and loss and turned their experiences, along with her own, into a book.
She has asked complete strangers to sleep in her bed for eight hours, documenting all that she saw ("The Sleepers" or "Les Dormeurs," 1979); impulsively chased a man through the streets of Venice, camera and notepad at hand ("Suite Venitienne," 1979); and returned an abandoned address book to its owner, but only after calling everyone listed to create a faceless portrait of someone she had never met. ("Address Book," 1983). When "Address Book" was published the owner stepped forward and threatened to unearth some compromising photos of Calle that had been taken years before. That faceless portrait of someone who didn't take kindly to be so literally exposed suddenly became very clear.