Sophie Calle Quotes

Art is a way of taking distance. The pathological or therapeutic aspects exist, but just as catalysts.

Objects always meet your obsession. Once you have an obsession, you step on it at every corner.

I traveled for seven years, and when I came back home I was completely lost. I didn't know what to do with my life, so I decided to let people decide for me. For month I followed strangers on the street. For the pleasure of following, not because the party interested me. I photographed them without their knowledge, took note of their movements, and finally lost sight of them. At the end of January 1980, I chose a man and followed him to Venice. That's how I started. That's all.

I try every time for a project to have a natural ending. As much as I can, I try to follow the story and to give it its own end.

For 'The Hotel' I spent one year to find the hotel, I spent three months going through the text and writing it, I spent three months going through the photographs and I spent one day deciding it would be this size and this frame...it's the last thought in the process.

I don't care about truth; I care about art and style and writing and occupying the wall. For me, my writing style is very linked to the fact that it is a work of art on the wall. I had to find a way to write in concise, effective phrases that people standing or walking into a room could read.

At my age, I know myself. If I make a project, it's a way to help me. I don't do it for therapeutic reasons, but I know that the therapy can be a side profit.

In April 1981, at my request, my mother went to a detective agency. She hired them to follow me, to report my daily activities, and to provide photographic evidence of my existence.

I went to Istanbul. I spoke to blind people, most of whom had lost their sight suddenly. I asked them to describe the last thing they saw.

I know how I live my life. I have a little magnet brain that attracts the kind of things that obsess me.

I met a photographer who agreed to give me a few lessons; in exchange, I had to pose naked for him.

I made three works about men in my life. But I had much more than three men. I never wrote about them.

My mother was a very absent mother. She was going out, she was drinking a lot, she liked to have fun. It's fine with me. I have no bitterness about it. When I was 3, she went to America for months. I never had any problems with that. I even liked it.

I think I've never left my house to take a plane without writing my will. There must be about 30 wills in my drawers, everywhere, in the kitchen. Everywhere, I have wills because I write wills more easily than I write love letters.

I didn't go to the North Pole to do something about my mother. I was invited to the North Pole and I realized it was impossible to go there without thinking about her.