The perfect primer on acclaimed French artist Sophie Calle.

Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist and conceptual artist. Her work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is renowned for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives, which she has deployed in her acclaimed works Suite Venitienne, The Hotel and Address Book. She has had major exhibitions all over the world, including at the 2007 Venice Biennale, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and has worked closely with the writer Paul Auster. The Guardian called her ‘the Marcel Duchamp of dirty laundry’, and she was among the names in Blake Gopnik's list 'The 10 Most Important Artists of Today', with Gopnik arguing, 'It is the unartiness of Calle's work ― its refusal to fit any of the standard pigeonholes, or over anyone's sofa ― that makes it deserve space in museums.'

Clément Chéroux introduces this collection of over twenty of Calle’s most renowned projects, which are all accompanied by the artist’s own words.

About the Author:

Clément Chéroux is a French photography historian and curator. He is Chief Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The latest edition of Sophie Calle's classic artist's book features three new tales

First published in 1994 and regularly reissued and expanded since, this new edition of True Stories returns with three new stories. Calle's projects have frequently drawn on episodes from her own life, but this book--part visual memoir, part meditation on the resonances of photographs and belongings--is as close as she has come to producing an autobiography, albeit one highly poetical and fragmentary, as is characteristic of her work. The tales--never longer than a page--are by turns lighthearted, humorous, serious, dramatic or cruel. Each is accompanied by an image; each offers a fragment of life. Calle herself is the author, narrator and protagonist of her stories and photography. Her words are somber, chosen precisely and carefully. She offers up her own memories--childhood, marriage, sex and death--with brilliant humor, insight and pleasure. By turns serious, hilarious, dramatic or cruel, these real-life stories represent a form of work in progress recounting fragments of her life.

About the Author:

Sophie Calle (born 1953) is an internationally renowned artist whose controversial works often fuse conceptual art and Oulipo-like constraints, investigatory methods and the plundering of autobiography. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Hayward Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. She lives and works in Paris.

‘I received an email telling me it was over. I didn’t know how to respond. It was as if it wasn’t meant for me. It ended with the words: "Take Care of Yourself". I took this recommendation literally. I asked a hundred and two women, chosen for their profession, to interpret the letter in their professional capacity. To analyse it, provide a commentary on it, act it, dance it, sing it. Dissect it. Squeeze it dry. Understand for me. Answer for me. It was a way to take the time to break up. At my own pace. A way to take care of myself.’

This superbly designed book accompanied Sophie Calle’s exhibition in the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2007. It comprises three books – one main volume, two smaller inside that – and four accompanying DVDs

Includes 107 interpretations by a range of successful female professionals, from leading actors and dancers to physicists, psychoanalysts and lawyers.

About the Author:

Sophie Calle (born 1953) is an internationally renowned artist whose controversial works often fuse conceptual art and Oulipo-like constraints, investigatory methods and the plundering of autobiography. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Hayward Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. She lives and works in Paris.