Her photographs show the back of a raincoated man as he travels through the winding Venetian streets, a surreal and striking backdrop to her internalised mission. The very beauty of her surroundings has a filmic quality, intensifying the thriller-esque narrative of her project.
Harriet Baker
Another Magazine
The result is this thrilling book, first published in 1983 ... Read moreand long out of print, now newly reissued in an understated English edition, blending matter-of-fact daily text entries with Calle’s elusive black and white photography.For Calle, the idea is to push the bounds of propriety, to go where one wouldn’t ordinarily go. This is — have no doubt — an assault on privacy, autonomy, undertaken without permission and enacted for the public, a public with which the subject may or may not wish to engage.That’s one of the challenges of her work, the discomfort we feel as she crosses the line.
David L Ulin
Los Angeles Times
In 1978, when Calle was 25 years old, she returned to Paris after seven years of roaming across North and South America. She struggled to re-adapt to fashionable Parisian society, and after months of reclusiveness, decided to follow people in the streets—not because they particularly interested her, but for the pleasure of following them. "I just had to choose a person and follow him and that way my day would simply drift by," she said to Another Magazine. This makes Calle sound like a flaneur, but when she followed a man from Paris to Venice, armed with a blonde wig and a camera, she produced Suite Venitienne (1980), which was quickly noticed and celebrated by both French and international critics.
Sophie Butcher
Vice Magazine
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