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I found an address book on the Rue des Martyrs . . . I will contact the people whose names are noted down. I will tell them, “I found an address book on the street by chance. Your number was in it. I’d like to meet you.” . . . Thus, I will get to know this man through his friends and acquaintances. I will try to discover who he is without ever meeting him.
Based on an address book that French artist Sophie Calle found in the streets of Paris in the early 1980s, this controversial book has finally been released in English. Perhaps Calle’s best known work is her 2007 Venice Biennale French Pavillion installation Please Take Care of Yourself, which has been exhibited worldwide. In 2009, Whitechapel Gallery in London organized a retrospective of her work.
Having found a lost address book on the street in Paris, Calle copied the pages before returning it anonymously to its owner. She then embarked on a search to come to know this stranger by contacting listed individuals. Her written accounts of these encounters with friends, family and colleagues—juxtaposed with Calle’s photographs—originally appeared as serial in the newspaper Libération over the course of one month in 1983. When Pierre D., the original owner of the address book, learned about the work and its appearance in the newspaper, he threatened to sue. Calle agreed not to republish the work until after his death. Now it has been almost thirty years since its original publication in France and it is ready for the first time in English.
Source: Siglio Press
