For more than forty years, Sophie Calle has used photography to explore complex notions of memory, loss and intimacy. As a conceptual artist, experimental filmmaker and an accomplished writer, Calle produces works that bring together text and image to remarkable effect, consistently creating biographical narratives that create vivid interpretations—as opposed to didactic depictions—of individuals. In The Shadow, 1981, the narrative is autobiographical, as she recounts the day she was followed by a private investigator. The current lot, comprised of 22 separate parts, sees this text coupled with photographs and notes taken by the private investigator, unaware that his target had orchestrated the set-up in the first place. Calle states, “At my request, my mother went to a detective agency called ‘Duluc’. She hired them to follow me, to report my daily activities and to provide photographic evidence of my existence.”
The Shadow conceptually continues to explore the theme of documenting that is ever present in Calle’s work. By juxtaposing her omniscient words with the investigator’s findings, Calle successfully blurs the line between fact and fiction, whilst becoming both the subject and the object of the installation.