PHOTOGRAPHS
Calle, Sophie
France (1953 - )
The Blind
1986
Gelatin silver print
14 3/4 x 10 3/4 in. (37.5 x 27.3 cm) visible image size; 16 x 12 x 1 1/2 in. (40.6 x 30.5 x 3.8 cm) frame size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company
FA 97.33 A

Sophie Calle has stated many times, "I am not a photographer." She may use photography as an essential element in expressing her ideas, but language is central to her work, with the visual component filling an illustrative role. Her work occurs as a kind of documentation of situations she masterminds involving other people, who may be either willing or unknowing accomplices. Her installations illuminate an impassioned period of time, the resolution of an impertinent question, or the disorder and exaggerated complexities of human interaction. In this work, she interviewed blind people, asking them to describe something they had envisioned but never actually experienced visually. The text here is that response."-- Label copy for After Art: Rethinking 150 Years of Photography, December 4, 1994 to March 26,1995.