Sophie Calle

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.
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.

In 1981 Sophie Calle took a job as a chambermaid for the Hotel C in Venice, Italy. Stashing her camera and tape recorder in her mop bucket, she not only cleans and tidies, but sorts through the evidence of the hotel guests' lives. Assigned 12 rooms on the fourth floor, she surveys the state of the guests' bedding, their books, newspapers and postcards, perfumes and cologne, traveling clothes and costumes for Carnival. She methodically photographs the contents of closets and suitcases, examining the detritus in the rubbish bin and the toiletries arranged on the washbasin. She discovers their birth dates and blood types, diary entries, letters from and photographs of lovers and family. She eavesdrops on arguments and love-making. She retrieves a pair of shoes from the wastebasket and takes two chocolates from a neglected box of sweets, while leaving behind stashes of money, pills and jewelry. Her thievery is the eye of the camera, observing the details that were not meant for her, or us, to see.
The Hotel now manifests as a book for the first time in English (it was previously included in the book Double Game). Collaborating with the artist on a new design that features enhanced and larger photographs, and pays specific attention to the beauty of the book as an object, Siglio is releasing its third book authored by Calle, after The Address Book (2012) and Suite Vénitienne (2015).
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. The Whitechapel Gallery in London organized a retrospective in 2009, and her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hayward Gallery and Serpentine, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. She lives and works in Paris.

First published in French in 1994, quickly acclaimed as a photobook classic and since republished and enhanced, True Stories returns for the sixth time, gathering a series of short autobiographical texts and photos by acclaimed French artist Sophie Calle, this time with four new tales. 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.

The slim, portable volume is divided into sections: the first is composed of various reflections on objects such as a shoe, a postcard or "the breasts"; the second, "The Husband," of recollections of episodes from Calle's first marriage; and the third gathers a variety of autobiographical recollections. Calle herself is the author, narrator and protagonist of her stories and photography; her words are somber, chosen precisely and carefully. One of the 21st century's foremost artists, Calle here offers up her own story—childhood, marriage, sex, death—with brilliant humor, insight and pleasure.

“She was called successively Rachel, Monique, Szyndler, Calle, Pagliero, Gonthier, Sindler,” reads the first lines of Sophie Calle: Rachel Monique, embroidered on the cover. “My mother liked people to talk about her. Her life did not appear in my work, and that annoyed her. When I set up my camera at the bottom of the bed in which she lay dying—fearing that she would pass away in my absence, whereas I wanted to be present and hear her last words—she exclaimed, ‘Finally.’”

Sophie Calle: Rachel Monique tells the story of Monique Szyndler, Sophie Calle’s mother who died in 2007, through diary excerpts and photographs selected by the artist from family albums. Described as “haunting” and “a mystery novel that tirelessly searches for a missing person,” the Rachel Monique project honors a daughter’s complicated relationship with her mother and the artist’s deeply felt grief.

This volume, presenting Calle’s installation of Rachel Monique at the Palais de Tokyo, was designed in close collaboration with the artist. The cover text is embroidered to create a precious object, and all of the texts relating to the installation are beautifully embossed. Sophie Calle: Rachel Monique is a highly personal and moving book, intimate and universal in its expressions of mourning and memory.

First published in French in 1994, quickly acclaimed as a photobook classic and since republished and enhanced, True Stories returns for the fifth time, gathering a series of short autobiographical texts and photos by acclaimed French artist Sophie Calle, this time with four new tales. 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.

The slim, portable volume is divided into sections: the first is composed of various reflections on objects such as a shoe, a postcard or “the breasts”; the second, “The Husband,” of recollections of episodes from Calle’s first marriage; and the third gathers a variety of autobiographical recollections. Calle herself is the author, narrator and protagonist of her stories and photography; her words are somber, chosen precisely and carefully. One of the 21st century’s foremost artists, Calle here offers up her own story--childhood, marriage, sex, death--with brilliant humor, insight and pleasure.

Sophie Calle (born 1953) creates controversial works exploring the tensions between the observed, the reported, the secret and the unsaid. She has mounted solo shows at major museums across the world and represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2007.