1979–1981 In
Suite Venitienne (1979), Calle followed a man she met at a party in Paris to
Venice, where she disguised herself and followed him around the city, photographing him. Calle's surveillance of the man, who she identifies only as Henri B., includes black and white photographs accompanied by text. Calle's first artistic work was
The Sleepers (
Les Dormeurs), a project in which she invited passers-by to occupy her bed. Some were friends, or friends of friends, and some were strangers to her. She served them food and photographed them every hour. In order to execute her project
The Hotel (1981), she was hired as a chambermaid at a hotel in Venice where she was able to explore the writings and objects of the hotel guests. Insight into her process and its resulting aesthetic can be gained through her account of this project: "I spent one year to find the hotel, I spent three months going through the text and writing it, I spent three months going through the photographs, and I spent one day deciding it would be this size and this frame...it's the last thought in the process."
Mid- and late 1980s One of Calle's first projects to generate public controversy was
Address Book (1983). The French daily newspaper
Libération invited her to publish a series of 28 articles. Having recently found an address book on the street (which she photocopied and returned to its owner), she decided to call some of the telephone numbers in the book and speak with the people about its owner. To the transcripts of these conversations, Calle added photographs of the man's favorite activities, creating a portrait of a man she never met, by way of his acquaintances. The articles were published, but upon discovering them, the owner of the address book, a documentary filmmaker named Pierre Baudry, threatened to sue the artist for invasion of privacy. As Calle reports, the owner discovered a nude photograph of her, and demanded the newspaper publish it, in retaliation for what he perceived to be an unwelcome intrusion into his private life. Another of Calle's noteworthy projects is titled
The Blind (1986), for which she interviewed blind people, and asked them to define beauty. Their responses were accompanied by her photographic interpretation of their ideas of beauty, and portraits of the interviewees. Calle has created elaborate display cases of birthday presents given to her throughout her life; this process was detailed by
Grégoire Bouillier in his memoir
The Mystery Guest: An Account (2006). According to Bouillier, the premise of his story was that "A woman who has left a man without saying why calls him years later and asks him to be the 'mystery guest' at a birthday party thrown by the artist Sophie Calle. And by the end of this fashionable—and utterly humiliating—party, the narrator figures out the secret of their breakup."
1990s In 1996, Calle asked Israelis and Palestinians from
Jerusalem to take her to public places that became part of their private sphere, exploring how one's personal story can create an intimacy with a place. Inspired by the
eruv, the Jewish law that permits to turn a public space into a private area by surrounding it with wires, making it possible to carry objects during the Sabbath, the '''' is exhibited at Paris's
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme. The same year, Calle released a film titled
No Sex Last Night which she created in collaboration with American photographer Gregory Shephard. The film documents their road trip across America, which ends in a wedding chapel in
Las Vegas. Rather than following the
genre conventions of a road trip or a romance, the film is designed to document the result of a man and woman who barely knew each other, embarking on an intimate journey together. Calle asked writer and filmmaker
Paul Auster to "invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble" and served as the model for the character Maria in Auster's 1992 novel
Leviathan. This mingling of fact and fiction so intrigued Calle that she created the works of art created by the fictional character, which included a series of color-coordinated meals. These works are documented in her publication
Double Game (1999). Auster later challenged Calle to create and maintain a public amenity in New York City. The artist's response was to augment a telephone booth on the corner of
Greenwich and Harrison Streets in Manhattan with a note pad, a bottle of water, a pack of cigarettes, flowers, cash, and sundry other items. Every day, Calle cleaned the booth and restocked the items, until the telephone company removed and discarded them. This project is documented in
The Gotham Handbook (1998). Calle asked friends, acquaintances, and recommended women of all ages—including a parrot and a hand puppet—to interpret the break-up e-mail and presented the results in the French pavilion. Calle explains the piece as follows: "I received an email telling me it was over. I didn't know how to respond. It was almost as if it hadn't been meant for me. It ended with the words, 'take care of yourself.' And so I did. I asked 107 women, chosen for their profession or skills, to interpret this letter. To analyze it, comment on it, dance it, sing it. Exhaust it. Understand it for me. Answer for me. It was a way of taking the time to break up. A way of taking care of myself." Jessica Lott, winner of the Frieze Writer's Prize for her review of the piece, described it thus: "Take Care of Yourself is a break-up letter (Calle's) then-boyfriend (
Grégoire Bouillier, dubbed ‘X’) sent her via e-mail. Calle took the e-mail, and the paralyzing confusion that accompanies the mind's failure to comprehend heartbreak, and distributed it to 107 women of various professions, skills and talents to help her understand it – to interpret, analyze, examine and perform it to gain perspective on her perplexing situation. Calle insists that she did not need the other women's sentiments for herself, but to ensure that the piece was well-rounded. At her gallery shows, Calle frequently supplies suggestion forms on which visitors are encouraged to furnish ideas for her art, while she sits beside them with an uninterested expression. In 2009/2010, a major retrospective exhibition of her work, including
Take Care of Yourself, The Sleepers, Address Book and others, was held opened at the
Whitechapel Gallery in London.
2010s In 2011 her work
True Stories was installed at the historic
1850 House at the
Pontalba Building at
Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana as part of the
Prospect 2 Contemporary Art Festival. The house, an historic museum that is managed as part of the
Louisiana State Museum, is furnished with historic furniture as it was in the mid-19th century. The artist inserted her own, personal historical objects and ephemera, with short, narrative explanatory text, into the scenes, affecting the notion that she had occupied the house shortly before the viewers' arrival. In 2012, Calle's
The Address Book was published for the first time in its entirety. In 2015,
Suite Vénitienne was redesigned and republished. In 2014, Calle's work
Rachel, Monique was displayed at the Episcopal Church of Heavenly Rest in New York City. It involved video Calle took of her mother, Monique Sindler, on her deathbed, as well as excerpts of her diary, read by actress
Kim Cattrall. Calle took her mother's portrait and jewelry and buried them at the North Pole. Portraits of her doing so were also on exhibition. In 2017, Calle was commissioned to create a public artwork for
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn,
Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery. The piece will remain in the cemetery for 25 years. In 2017–2018, Calle had a public art installation at
Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (the Museum of Hunting and Nature) in Paris.
2020s Calle's work was featured in a site-specific installation occupying four floors in the
Musée Picasso in 2023. Another retrospective, called "Sophie Calle: Overshare", opened in 2024 at the
Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis with plans to travel to the
Orange County Museum of Art. The Minneapolis exhibit debuted Calle’s project “On the Hunt”, which quotes dating ads from a French hunting magazine from 1895 to 2019, during which the men’s concerns shifted from the virginity of their prospective partners to their physical appearance. Alongside these quotes are images of hunted animals and hunting towers. == Critical analysis ==