Sophie Calle. Untitled

Sophie Calle won the prestigious Hasselblad International Award in Photography, in 2011. At the Venice Biennale, in 2007, she excited the public with her installation Take care of yourself, with 107 women protagonists (including Laurie Anderson, Jeanne Moreau and Luciana Littizzetto) who read and interpreted the goodbye letter the artist received via email from her boyfriend. The electronic missive ended with the phrase which became the piece’s title. This personal episode of abandonment and pain became a book and a traveling show, which circled the globe, and was most recently installed at the Stavanger Art Museum in Norway. To produce this portrait (part of a documentary series titled Empreintes), the intriguing French artist used the letter form again, inviting the director to follow certain rules – as in a game – and allowing access to her house, archives and personal computer in order to find traces of life and work with which to compose a film history. The documentary opens and closes with images of a cemetery in California. In this scenario, linked to the creation of some her first photographic works, we follow Calle as she prepares her own final ritual. “The happy things, I just live them” – she declares in the film – “The sad ones, I use.”