Sophie Calle Double Game

"At the end of January 1981, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of our conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice. I decided to follow him."


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"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 prove photographic evidence of my existence."


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"I found an address book. I decided to photocopy the contents before sending it back anonymously to its owner. I then contacted those people whose names were noted down and asked them to tell me about the owner. Thus I would get to know this man through his friends, his acquaintances. I would try to discover who he was without ever meeting him and to produce a portrait of him, over an uncertain length of time, that would depend on the willingness of his friends to talk about him and on the turn taken by events."


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"I saw him for the first time in December 1985, at a lecture he was giving. I found him attractive, but one thing bothered me: he was wearing an ugly tie. The next day I anonymously sent him a thin brown tie. Later, I saw him in a restaurant and he was wearing it. Unfortunately, it clashed with his shirt. It was then that I decided to take on the task of dressing him from head to toe: I would send him one article of clothing every year at Christmas."


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