Gloria K., first sleeper. Anne B., second sleeper.

Sophie Calle

1979 · Gelatin silver prints · Photographs

While obviously indebted to the deadpan photo-text combinations of Conceptualism, Calle's art is as purely French at its core as the novels of Marguerite Duras and the films of Alain Resnais-an intimate exploration of memory, desire, and obsessive longing. The artist's primary method involves a perfectly calibrated interplay between narrative and image, both of which steadily approach their object of desire only to find another blind spot-that which can never be captured through language or representation. This work is the first segment of Calle's first work, The Sleepers (1979), in which the artist invited twenty-nine friends and acquaintances to sleep in her bed consecutively between April 1 and April 9, during which time she photographed them once an hour and kept notes recording each encounter. All the elements of Calle's art-from the voyeuristic inversion of the private sphere (rituals of the bedroom) and the public (the book or gallery wall) to the use of serial, repetitive structures-are present here in embryonic form.

Artist

Sophie Calle

Date

1979

Medium

Gelatin silver prints

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of the artist and Olivier Renaud-Clement, in memory of Gilles Dusein, 2000