http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CVRmcLbci8 here is a charming interview in which Sophie speaks of how she became an artist.


Sophie didn't start as an artist. she was studying only to please her father who would give her money for doing so. her teacher soon realized this and told her to go traveling. to keep her father happy her teacher put her name on other students results. After seven years of traveling she came back to pairs but when she got there she felt lost. she wanted to see what people do so she started following people and documented them.

Not only does Calle deal with the private lives of others she also explores her own in her work. She became so intrigued by following her unwitting subjects that she wanted to reverse the relationship and become the subject herself. She asked her mother to hire a private detective to follow her, without the detective knowing that she had arranged it, with the hopes that his investigation would provide photographic evidence of her existence.




I found her exhibition Take Care of Yourself (2007) intriguing in which she shows 107 interpretations of an email she got from her lover, telling her the affair was over. Each and every single one of the interpreters are women. They were given the instructions to examine the letter based on their profession. For example, a writer would point out the style of the letter, a lawyer would defend Calle’s lover, a psychoanalyst would talk about his psychology etc. Additionally, Sophie Calle asked several performing artists to act out the letter and bring it to life, which included Carla Bruni, who has been France’s second first lady under President Sarkozy’s time in office. Calle video documented them acting it out and photographed the other participants of the experiment as well so that each typed interpretation would be put together with its author’s photo in a style unique to Sophie Calle.