Is Sophie Calle’s work a voyeuristic exploration of her own identity or a commentary on society itself?

By Molly Harding

Sophie Calle has established herself as a strong, enigmatic force in conceptualist art, however, with her wide breadth of work and its deviating mediums and concepts it is hard to conclude whether Calle’s work is more focused on her own identity or if it is intended to be a commentary on society itself. The key points I will endeavour to explore in this essay will include the theme of voyeurism in Calle’s work relating to her own experiences and her experimentation with different mediums and how it has influenced my own response to voyeurism in relation to my personal project. The later section will then focus on her work as relating to issues within society, the conceptualistic element in her work and reference to relating artists such as Fiona Banner and Paul Auster whom I have also studied during my coursework project.

Voyeurism is a greatly significant theme that runs through all of the works of Calle’s which I will explore throughout this essay. The term voyeur simply means to “one who sees” (8) so it is a wide field and can be and has been interpreted in many ways by the primary artist focus of my essay.

Many of her early works such as The Sleepers (1979) and The Hotel (1981) have a definitive voyeuristic quality; in the first Calle photographs twenty nine people sleeping in her bed in eight hour shifts. The photographs are accompanied by descriptive text and feel like Calle capturing a physical experience and documenting the quirks of a basic human need, a necessity which feels almost unnatural to witness in a set up scenario. One journalist notably called her the "Marcel Duchamp of emotional dirty laundry" (6) – a comment which I think pedals her as an influential figure in the world of conceptual photography as in this very first piece she already displayed strong motifs and a mixture of mediums and ideas. Although my artwork isn’t as profound as Calle’s, her photography has impacted my approach to my theme and allowed me to progress to my final design – what seems a personal image that has something to say about society.

Calle’s second work “The Hotel” (1981) is again a series of photographs accompanied by text from when Calle worked as a chamber maid and photographed residents belongings, her methods included “peering into a room when the floor-waiter opens the door to catch a glimpse of the unknown guests” (7). I admire this early photography work as the voyeurism is so blatant, the random composition of her images adds a sense of mania and disorganisation which stops the work from feeling contrived. It seems these images, paired with the documentaries style text, allows the viewer to examine an unknown person’s environment and belongings thus giving everyone a basis to build a character and story upon.

This early work seems less developed than some of her later works as although the photographs and text begin to analyse people through their belongings they don’t help me to answer my question of her artistic intentions. It appears here she reveals some of her own identity as she cleaned those rooms to make a living so the work has a twee feel rather than exposing glimpses that she is

trying to create some sort of social commentary or profound statement as I have tried to develop in my own work.

Images from The Hotel and The Sleepers respectively.

These two works inspired my own experiments. I first endeavoured to capture images around my own home, to me it felt as if Calle’s photography could be quite bleak in tone and in The Hotel especially it was as if she projected her loneliness into obsessively documenting people’s temporary residences. My experiments give an insight into my own home as if I am a detached voyeur in the hope the viewer can interpret the black and white images and construct an image of my family life – a picture of my identity and a commentary on my family life. I also annotated around these images in my sketchbook but was more flippant and brief in my choice of words as I wanted to leave more room for interpretation. Through the images and words I wanted to communicate an objective view of my house and some of its clutter; trying to capture interesting shapes, forms, incidental scenarios and textures rather than anything too

revealing or overly emotive

It struck me that Calle really began to delve into the complexities of her own identity in her 1989 work “La Striptease”, which was a book documenting explicit images of her during her time as a stripper. The wish to display her exposed and sexualised form could make her seem an exhibitionist and the mere title of one of my sources “Appointment with an artwork” (1) connotes that she is not afraid to compromise or play with her own image in her work and even cross the line into becoming the work itself. As with a lot of Calle’s work it could be argued to be “accidental” – she often collects day to day images and encounters and one source even mused that La Striptease “seemed to have as much to do with the need to earn a living as with the intricacies of radical gender theory.” (6) Although I appreciate the frankness of this work I did want my own to be more considered.

So, at this point it seems it can be difficult to sometimes establish what Calle is trying to achieve. However I believe the best art is ambiguous and going back to the Duchamp idea there are parallels between his work “Fountain” (1917) and all the Calle works I’ve discussed in the fact they may not be necessarily seen as art but documentation on a time or idea. Fountain was arguably the most influential work of the twentieth century. It was a satirical notion by Duchamp, questioning what art was - a commentary on the art world. Calle’s work is also highly conceptual and some critics could argue some of it is not art at all. This is the concept the Dada movement challenged, with French Professor Dalia Judovitz saying Duchamp "flushed the notion of artistic value down the drain" (10) and I think in a sense some of Calle’s work also questions what art can be.

Calle is known for experimenting between many different mediums to express her ideas about voyeurism. One of her most recognised and recent works “Take Care of Yourself” (2007) is a vast mutli media piece citing one hundred and seven different responses from women in different professions to the last line of a break up letter sent to her, ending crudely in “take care of yourself.” The gallery show for this included video installations, images and text analysis amongst many different mediums. Art Observed stated that “personal and inner narrative-driven projects question the role of spectator, as Calle makes both her viewers and collaborators complicit in trespassing her most private moments” (9), this supports my own ideas that this is not Calle purely indulging her sadness at the seemingly harsh termination of a relationship.

Furthermore it also seems Calle is exploring different ideas of different people doing different jobs within society. The piece explores the reactions and reasoning’s of individuals with the central core being this one simple sentence – a step away from the previous, more personally explorative exhibitions. Calle was interviewed on her reasons for compiling the show and she said on the subject of it being revenge “I did not want it to be. I hesitated everyday but ultimately, my excitement was stronger than me hesitation.” (2) This concluded that I believe this particular show started as a form of personal catharsis but then evolved into something much more as Calle realised the potential in allowing people an insight into her life as well as people representing different job roles and groups within society. The idea of representing an issue by using yourself in the work is something I have put into play by creating a hypothetical obsession in the latter stages of my project to show the issue of media representation within modern society

Sophie Calle also has even more work concentrated on being a social commentary rather than just the theme of voyeurism as a means to explore and indulge herself. My personal favourite of all her work is “The Blind” (1986) which explores the perception of beauty from people born without sight, each person has a portrait of themselves next to the text of what they perceive beauty to be and a photo of what this is. Whilst Calle argues "It was not a sociological project." (12) The images and words do seem to be exploring a minority’s view on something that can’t be defined as it is subjective.

There is also a profound irony in the fact that a fully sighted observer of the show is empowered with the chance to see what the blind subject has imagined all their life in a single glance.  I found support of my theories in a Drome magazine which wrote “The images which she collects are romantically cruel, able to highlight the poetic paradox of the composition” (12). This verbosely articulates the underlying harshness of the project which highlights how blessed the sighted are; the very fact we can see what un named blind individuals so desperately want to see seems to try to get us to empathise with them. The voyeurism in question here does not seem to be a pure social commentary on a minority’s perception of beauty and “can be understood as an exercise in self –exploration” (4). It appears there is never a true distinction between Calle’s work exploring her own identity and creating a commentary on society, maybe this is what makes her work so multi -dimensional and dynamic. The Blind to me definitely sways towards painting Calle as an artist capable of creating poignant social studies by utilizing a mixture of mediums and ideas.

Sophie Calle’s work has a strong vein of conceptualism running through it and I summon that it must be partially to do with the modern idea of conceptualism that allows her to explore original and unique ideas in ways that may not traditionally be appreciated in the art world. This ideology greatly comes in to context with her collaboration with novelist Paul Auster in “Double Game” (1992), the book relating to the social experiment where Calle allows “reality and fiction to mingle” (13). This is surely pure voyeurism in the sense that Calle gives herself to the book and her art form, she allows a man to write what she eats and she edits his original book “Leviathan” (the character Maria being based upon Calle and also the character Calle allows herself to briefly live as), this is explained by Calle in the introduction to Double Game, “The author imposes on his creature a chromatic regimen which consists in restricting herself to foods of a single color for any given day.” (13)

The fact she relates to herself as “his creature” connotes a shift in power in not just letting someone into her life but giving them the ability to regulate and authorize how she lives.” This has to be considered a social experiment and perhaps could be seen to comply with my initial question in that Calle may have been exploring her own identity through becoming someone else; a concept my final outcome will explore as I literalise myself physically becoming the “person” I admire.

In order to bring more scope to the essay I wish to draw more comparisons between Calle and other artists and their methods, with specific reference to the textual entities of their work and how this has influenced my own voyeurism themed project. Fiona Banner is an artist working today whose work, “The Nam” (1997) being the one I will discuss “defies traditional assumptions about the book and text” (14). The Nam is a one thousand page book that describes every scene from six popular Vietnam films in a stream of consciousness. Banner also crosses lines between what is defined as art as I would agree with the statement that The Nam “is not literature, it is an explosive flip book.” Another artist who brings text into her work is Jenny Holtzer, an artist who projects words and phrases onto buildings for all to see. I chose to include her as an artist study as I liked how her work was unavoidable and accessible to the masses, she wasn’t afraid of imposing her words upon people and forcing them to look at it, to become voyeurs of what she has to say.

Below are some of Holtzer’s projections

I allowed Holtzer’s techniques to inform my own theme of voyeurism in the images that can be found below. The projections in the images are from the film Network, which I chose because of its satire and link with my theme. The domestic setting of my house shows it may be a contained problem I am exploring but then the idea is bigger than the people in the images thus implying it is out of control though its scale and composition. The context is the façade of innocence we create, how because we are anonymous in front of our television and computer screens we can say what we want and plead ignorance. The typography is red in some of the images connoting the danger of this ideas and the projection itself creates a spotlight which identifies the perpetrator who remains oblivious to the threat they pose. Sophie Calle’s recognisable, temporarily domestic, settings in The Hotel did inform these photographic experiments along with some of her ideas about voyeurism in “The Blind” which exposes what people perceive to be beauty – mine is more about what people perceive to be okay to say. It has since evolved from this but these images display my ideas at the midpoint of my coursework project which have progressed since.

In conclusion I think I have been able to draw some conclusions in relation to my question. My research into Sophie Calle’s work has had a massive impact and influence on my own work and this essay has allowed me to delve into her themes of voyeurism further in a way that will only benefit the finalities of my coursework project. I initially could not decide whether Calle’s work represented voyeurism in the sense that it presented a personal exploration of her identity or a social commentary but now it seems that many of Calle’s works such as The Hotel and La Striptease were not necessarily meant to communicate anything, leaving it down to the viewer to interpret its messages. On the other hand work that seems to be a social commentary, such as The Blind, isn’t intended that way. My final thought would be that Calle’s work is often incidental and impulsive in its formation, she seems to use her initiative to create work rather than using pre conceived notions to justify her conceptualism, she doesn’t consciously try and do either of the things I posed in my questions but she does and has which makes her a highly established and exciting artist.

Abstract

This essay focusses on the question I concocted of, “Is Sophie Calle’s work a

voyeuristic exploration of her own identity or a commentary on society itself?”

My essays aims to explore Sophie Calle’s work in relation to some of her specific projects, her use of different mediums, conceptualism in her work and comparisons between her work and other artists and analysis to link it to the overall question. My own project explores voyeurism, albeit in varying forms to Sophie Calle and the other artists I’ve researched; this essay and my previous artist studies and experiments have helped me begin to finalise ideas on the conclusion of my project by allowing me to think more deeply about my work contextually and aesthetically.

The process of this essay coming to form was my pre-existing appreciating and research into Sophie Calle’s work; I had already conducted an artist study on her and explored her and her methods in previous projects. Her appeal stems from the variety of her ideas and how she doesn’t let traditional boundaries of what is acceptable hinder her work. She’s used many mediums but always seems to incorporate photography as her core medium throughout all her projects; I also wanted my own project to have a primary technique that could be refined and probed and photography has proved to be a strong medium for me in my project. Calle also uses a lot of typography and documentative text in her work to compliment her photography which has allowed me to jump between techniques and ideas to reach this final stage I am approaching.

My own project has strong foundations in photography; I like to work from images I have taken and combine this with text, painting, drawing or secondary images. Calle and the other artists I have looked at in the essay have shown me that because the theme of voyeurism has such a wide scope using lots of materials and techniques can help develop ideas and lead to satisfying outcomes such as these film stills below from my pre mock exam film “Outcome 3” that was also influenced by the work of Keith Tyson..

To end, my project has evolved into a study of an individual’s psychological response to the representation of Kate Middleton, this ultimate “idol” and how this voyeurism can evolve into obsession because of this celebrity culture. This all stems back to my studies of Sophie Calle, amongst other artists, who have informed the progression of my idea and my ambition to create a piece that comments on an issue within society because of the extreme voyeurism I have discussed.

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