![]() Following people is something detectives do on a daily basis. ![]() Despite the obvious similarities between the two works, Calle has remained unperturbed by it, stating in an interview with the White Review, “The purpose of our projects was different, the motives too. Sometimes the act of following was but brief, sometimes it lasted for hours. His constraints were that for the duration of one month, he would pick a random passerby and follow them until they entered a private space. The artist Vito Acconci had done it ten years earlier in New York, and called it, suitably, Following Piece. In her diary, she notes down that she has started to feel a connection between the two of them, a strange form of attraction.Ĭalle wasn’t the first person to follow strangers for art. But Calle isn’t deterred, for she has got it into her head that this isn’t merely about coincidence anymore, this about obsession. Often she loses Henri B., and it’s a long, cold wait to come across him again. Suite Vénitienne by Sophie Calleįor Calle, the, well, calli, are a source of endless teasing and vexation. Some are so narrow, the poet Robert Browning noted, that he couldn’t open his umbrella. ![]() Running like tentacles from the squares, there are said to be more than three thousand alleyways spreading through Venice known as calli, plural form of calle, which shares its name, in yet another coincidence, with Sophie. What he sees, she sees.īut Venice is a labyrinth, and its misdirection, shadowy corners, and foggy side canals seem to act as both accomplice to Calle’s surveillance and saboteur. Henri B is travelling with his wife, and Calle follows the pair of them, noting which shops they go into, how long they spend there where Henri, who is a photographer, stops to take a photograph. Eventually, though, she finds him at the Casa de Stefani. Every hotel she rings – the Cipriani, Carlton Executive, Gabriella, Metropole, Luna – claim that no one by his description is a guest there. The first few days are spent actually locating Henri B., which proves difficult. It is the perfect setting under which to surveil someone, and that someone is referred to by Calle as only ‘Henri B.’ Suite Vénitienne by Sophie Calle It is February and, in another act of coincidence, Carnevale has come to the city on the water. Her suitcase, as she stands at the entrance to Stazione Santa Lucia, is filled with the usual suspects toothpaste, underwear, blonde wig, hats (various), gloves, a veil, sunglasses, etc. Quelle coïncidence! Overhearing that he will be travelling to Venice the next day, she decides then and there to follow him. One day, she bumps into a man she had been following earlier that day at a gallery opening they’ve both been invited to. The intimacy of these photographs rubbed up against the clinical banality of the textual descriptions, and thus Calle began to be known by her use of portraiture, conceptual art, and the intersection of public exposure/private experience as a creative drive for her work. In amongst all this, Sophie was still enjoying her ‘private games’, still following strangers around the streets of Paris. Sleepers by Sophie Calle Patrick X, Sixteenth Sleeper, 1979 Sleepers by Sophie Calle Having never attended art school, in 1979 she exhibited her first major project, The Sleepers (1979), which involved inviting strangers to spend eight hours in her bed, documenting their stay through notes and photographs. Having been gone for so long, she started to follow strangers as a means of reacquainting herself with the city of Paris. When she returned to Paris, she began what she would term ‘private games’ – games that would go on to form the basis of her career. ![]() At the age of 17, the artist Sophie Calle dropped out of university where one of her professors was Jean Baudrillard – yes, the philosopher – and spent the next seven years travelling through the French mountains, then Crete, China, the United States, and Mexico.
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