CALLE, Sophie (Parigi, 1953)Suite Venitienne

Die-cut cover. Book Design by  Sophie Calle e Natalie Kraft

In Suite Vénitienne, Sophie Calle's first artist's book, she notates, in diaristic, time-stamped entries, her surveillance of Henri B. in Venice. She also carefully observes her own emotions as she searches for, finds and follows him.

Her investigation is both methodical (calling every hotel, visiting the police station) and arbitrary (sometimes following a stranger—a flower delivery boy, for instance—hoping someone might lead her to him).

Once she does find him and follows him, “what we see,” as Larry Rinder writes in his essay “Sophie Calle and the Practice of Doubt,” “is not the object in closer view but the measure of the distance in between.” Henri B., as he wanders and photographs Venice often in the company of another woman, is still an enigma whom Calle observes from the semi-obscurity of the shadows where she hides in disguise.

This Siglio reissue is a completely new iteration of Suite Vénitienne, designed in collaboration with Calle, to be the definitive English-language edition.

Read more: an article in the Los Angeles Times