Sophie Calle - True Stories

4.4/5 ( ratings)

First published in French in 1994, quickly acclaimed as a photobook classic, and now expanded and reissued in this first English-language edition from Actes Sud, "True Stories" gathers a series of short autobiographical texts and photos by Sophie Calle. 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. The first section is composed of various reflections on objects such as a shoe, a postcard, a bathrobe and a bed, or musings on the artist's body, such as "The Love Letter": "For years a love letter languished on my desk. I had never received a love letter, so I paid a public scribe to write one. Eight days later, I received seven beautiful pages of pure poetry penned in ink. It had cost me one hundred francs and the man said: '...as for myself, without moving from my chair I was everywhere with you.'" The second section of the book, "The Husband," is comprised of ten recollections of episodes from Calle's first marriage, by turns funny , erotic and sad. A third section gathers various autobiographical tales, and the book closes with three interlinked stories titled "Monique." This new edition includes five new photo-text presentations and is the first English translation.
Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist and conceptual artist. Among her many publications are "The Address Book," "Blind," "Take Care of Yourself" and "Double Game."