Sophie Calle is an artist to attached to absences. Once, for an installation titled Ghost, at New Yorks Museum of Modem Art, she had several paintings from the permanent collection taken down. In their place she installed drawings and descriptions of the missing artwork made by museum workers–from janitors to curators. For another piece, she asked 23 blind people to put their ideas of beauty into words, then photographed their faces. A photo series begun in 1976 in a California cemetery documents generic tombstones whose inscriptions read “Mother,” “Father,” “Brother,” “Sister.” She vacated her bed for a week in 1979 and photographed a succession of strangers she had invited to occupy it in eight-hour shifts.
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Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Joachim Magrean.
