BOLDTYPE ISSUE #50: Artwork By
Sophie Calle
Boldtype's cover features a detail from Sophie Calle's 1981 project The Hotel, as featured in her book Double Game. Originally published in 1999, Double Game was reprinted by D.A.P. / Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. and Violette Editions in 2007 to celebrate Calle's representation of France at the Venice Biennale this past summer.
Rather than taking on the format of a traditional monograph, the luxurious Double Game frames the artist's past work between two projects inspired by an exchange with the writer Paul Auster. The above image of a floral-patterned hotel room comes from this retrospective section and is presented alongside other images and texts generated by Calle's experience as a chambermaid in a Venice pensione. Calle observed guest rooms through daily inspections, and her notes present formulations about the unseen inhabitants, discerned through their luggage contents, grooming products, and wastebaskets.
In her straightforward images, Calle employs a documentary style of photography to lend veracity to her works, which often casually blend fact and fiction. Calle's writing combines a coolly detached tone with an eyebrow-raising disregard of personal boundaries, in order to chronicle situations that combine the engrossing read of a novel with the appeal of poetic imagery.
-Catherine Krudy
