Platform for (un)Solicited Research and Advice

In 1983, the French newspaper Libération invited Sophie Calle to publish a series of 28 articles. Having recently found on the street the address book of a man called Pierre Baudry, Sophie Calle photocopied the content and afterwards
returned it to its owner (his address was written in one of the first pages of the book). Later on, she visited and interviewed some of the people who were listed in the book. Sophie Calle’s concern was to build up a portrait of the man according to what his acquaintances had to say about him. The articles were published next to some pictures that Calle took of the man’s favourite activities.

According to an interview that Sophie Calle had with Stuart Jeffries for The Guardian, the owner of the address book (a documentary film maker) threatened to sue her for invasion of privacy after he discovered the articles. However, once that the Libération newspaper agreed on publishing a nude photograph of Sophie Calle, he felt things were even. “He was trying to be very aggressive. He disliked what I did.” Sophie Calle said.

Things had a much different ending in Paul Auster’s novel Leviathan. For the book, Auster describes some of the works of Sophie Calle as carried out by a fictional character known as Maria Turner. To tell the whole story of Maria would be inappropriate for this blog (and to some extent also repetitive). However it might be enough with saying that the Address Book project eventually leads Maria into another story where she ended with her jaw being broken along with a wrist, a couple of cracked ribs and bruises all over her body.

It seems having a naked picture of yourself published in newspaper might not be that bad after all.