Sophie Calle is a French photographer and writer as well as a installation and conceptual artist. Calle’s work mainly depicts human vulnerability and looks deeper into identity and intimacy. Many people recognise her for her ‘detective-like’ tendencies where she follows strangers and will investigate their private lives. A lot of her photographic work will include panels of her own writing giving context to her images. With her work spanning across photography, film and text her often controversial projects provide thorough documentation of other peoples lives as well as her interaction with these people. A key example of this is her work Suite Vénitienne (1980) where Calle followed a stranger from Paris to Venice and documented the whole experience. Calle states “Establishing rules and following them is restful. If you follow someone, you don’t have to wonder where you’re going to eat, they take you to their restaurant. The choice is made for you.”
Blind
“I met people who were born blind. Who had never seen. I asked them what their image of beauty was.“
This project turned out to be one of Sophie Calle’s most controversial photographic endeavours. She visited an institute for the blind in Paris and asked if she could speak to them about the subject of beauty. Calle made a series of 2 images for each persona as well as text from what they thought was beautiful. Calle types the subjects own works to go along side the portrait and image of the scene that they named was beautiful. The final piece of work included 23 interviews and over 80 photographs of the subjects and ‘beautiful’ scenes. The project was debuted at a Los Angeles gallery in 1989.
The question that Sophie Calle asked every person she interviewed was to describe their “image of beauty”, as this project was based on people who had been blind since birth this sparked up a lot of controversy in the photography society as well as the general public who viewed her project. Her images included black and white portraits of un-named subjects, many with dishevelled hair, cracked lips, and closed or blankly staring eyes. One of the woman photographed mentions the actor Alain Delon; another names a Welsh hillside. A young boy tells us that “green is beautiful. Because every time I like something, I’m told it’s green. Grass is green, trees, leaves, nature too … I like to dress in green.” She represents green, with a manicured lawn. Calle wanted to emphasize the contrast between the subjects choices of beauty and what visitors with sight might understand as beautiful.
The Blind caused disputes in the disability community, as Calle was asking subjects to tell her about what they cannot see and developing a a gaze which cannot be returned. Many say that Calles portraits are harsh and unflattering as the subjects seem caught off guard by the photograph being taken. These images also sit beside photographs of objects, people and scenes that the subjects will never see as well as text that the subjects used to describe why they though these things were beautiful. Viewers initially call her project moving but in contrast the disability politics today say a different narrative.
One of the key controverses over this project was first noted by a deaf artist, Joseph Grigely, who was a well known teacher at a school for the the education of deaf and gard of hearing students. Grigely, originally wrote 35 post cards to Calle about her photogray work on the bind, in these post cards he asked questions whihc many would dsay were thought-provoking refections on the serises while also exposing the projects uneven power dynamics. Grigely stated that the work revels “not so much the voices of the blind as the voice of Sophie Calle.” Calle controls her subjects, not only selecting the quotes and images on display but shaping the project’s very premise. In this way, the project, while presumably about or invested in the blind, has been formed by a sighted artist for a sighted audience.
Image Analysis
This is one of Sophie Calles most known subject in her project Blind. Its of a young boy from the institution that Calle visited. I think that people find this one of the most impactful collections as it is a young boy that is having to struggle with blindness as well as emotional message about what he thought was beautiful. In his text it states “green is beautiful. Because every time I like something, I’m told it’s green. Grass is green, trees, leaves, nature too … I like to dress in green.” Calle put together the portrait, text and the image of what they pictured was beautiful together to create a series of three images, this this particular subject she chose to photograph fresh grass as a way of interpreting that quote that they young boy gave her. Many say that Calle took unflattering images of her subjects but I feel with this individual she was able to capture the personality of the young boy through both his portrait and the text placed next to it.
