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    ARTICLE Johnnie Gratton, Sophie Calle's Des Histoires Vraies, Irony and Beyond (In Phototextualities, Ed by Alex Hugues and Andrea Noble, P 182 197) 2

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    ARTICLE Johnnie Gratton, Sophie Calle's Des Histoires Vraies, Irony and Beyond (In Phototextualities, Ed by Alex Hugues and Andrea Noble, P 182 197) 2

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    ARTICLE Johnnie Gratton, Sophie Calle's Des Histoires vraies, Irony and Beyond (in Phototextualities, ed by Alex Hugues and Andrea Noble, p 182 197) 2

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    ARTICLE Johnnie Gratton, Sophie Calle's Des Histoires Vraies, Irony and Beyond (In Phototextualities, Ed by Alex Hugues and Andrea Noble, P 182 197) 2

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    Sophie Calle’s Des histoires vraies: Irony and Beyond JOHNNIE GRATTON nl ee ee 4 vey of Hek-starting the whole tion of phottestualry. Vie ee a oe ae ting eam ht ny ager Sk ot Ics cin hog ir es er Lie panera peaeoat oan oa the preciey a siuplifeation: one of many thrown up by the hea Se steams mooecen aac Polen ite imine! petty pe ere Phowugrepa orate very Teen the Lea f photogapy alll Ee eg ae erate a tre are toi sme fsa bya trae fete plone am \ Veotenand ister fogdar xtc ots tines er ere Vee Ta hscoutartof comtemporary Feeachat; few atts woul weg hes mr gy of rl Popa ee one without the other This double bes Is accommodated in ‘main forms. The first, and the one that usually appears first, is the lostallation exhibited in an art gallery or museum, where photos hnung at eye level or sometimes, if large enough, simply lft leaning ‘against a wall are juxtaposed with framed printed texts. But Calle hag also founda rewarding outlet in the form of book publications based On the same kindof text/photo juxtaposition. By virtue of being cant actly redistributed across the sequenced pages of a book, the pub- lished work tends all the more strongly to bear out the descrjtion ot herself that Calle is said to favor—that of “narrative artist” (thigh neatly sidesteps, even while it echoes, the mote frequently bestowed, label “conceptual artist”). Cale’s work has become renowned for the > stimulating and often controversial ways in which it crosses the boundary lines between self and other, public and private, detach. ‘ment and involvement, art and life. aie Calle remains best known for installations that are records of experimental projets In which photos were taken and words tape- ‘recorded or written at the same time, that is, over the realtime ofthe Project in question. The project requires and ensures a contemp ‘oncity (if not absolute simulianeity) of text, image, and referer. ather differently, the (wo phototextual sequences contained in Des ‘histoire vrates (1994; True Stores) take as their antecedent aspects of the global project we calla “life” in this case Calle’ own life. To invoke smother composite word, whose French variant was first colned by Wills Mora in the early 1980s, Des histories vratesis an experiment in | ‘photobiography:”® Accordingly, the play of time and tcnse will be! sch as tomakeit very unlikely fora contemporancity af ext, image, und referent to come about, Of the two text-image sequences contained in this volume, the list, Des histoires ures, gives its tile to the book, and consists of six. \cen chronologically organized photobiographical units narrating plsodes dispersed across atleast twenty-seven years of Calle’ lie (HY 9-41). The second sequence (DHV 43-63) titled Le Mart: ro "its (The Husband: Ten Tales) consists of ten photabiographically presented episodes spread over a much shorter time span: the few pats takes Calle to meet, marry, divorce, and forget her American lover, Greg Shephard. to each case, what Lam calling a “photobio- Jophica” unit consists ofa photo and a short text headed by a tie The text docs not necessarily refer directly to the photo bat tends luther to nagativize the objector objets represented in the photo Photo and text ar@ juxtaposed in a variety of patterns, most often on {acing popes but occasionally withthe text set beneath photo spread 47085 two pages. On three occasions in the fst sequence and onee in RR em Seth ein the second, the image element is missing from the unit, though the luni argaably remains both “phototextual” and “photoblographica,” Insofar asa space islet where a photo might have featured, Thus the ‘lank page invites the eader to ponder the reasons for and signifi= cance of the absent image. For the purposes ofthis discussion, T shall, teoneentrate primarily on the first sequence. Is it possible inthis postmodernist day and age to take a tile such as "True Stories” without a pinch of sal? The image ofa closed eyelid Teatured on both the front and back covers ofthe 1994 Actes Sud edi- tion of CalleS book might well be taken to represent a wink of com plicity encouraging healthy skepticism about the capacity of either photographic or autobiographical representation to pin down anything as definitive as “the” truth, or even “a” truth, of the represented subject. in fact, 1 strongly suspect chat Calle’ title is a quotation from. Serge Doubrovsky’s Le Liore brisé (1989; The Broken Book}, where Doubrovsky’s narrator himself quotes at one point from the diary of ‘Antoine Roquentin, the hero of Jean-Paul Sartre's famous novel La [Nausée (Nausea) of 1934: ‘When you tell your own story it's always storytelling, People talk about erue stories, Asif there could be sucha thing as true Stories; events occur in one direction and we recount them in| the opposite direction. Autobiography, novel, itsall the same, ‘The same thing, the same trickery. {Quand on se raconte, ce sont toujours des racontars. On parle \Chistoires wraies.Comme s'il pouvalt y avoir des histores| ‘rales; les évenements se produisent dans un sens et nous les ‘acontons en sens inverse. Autobiograpbie, roman, patil. Le meme tru, le méme truquage * Doubrovsly, of courses best knowns the inventor ofthe term “aloo which con be akon to esrb one fhe forms assumed by autoblogeaphial wring ot tine of severly diminished faith in the power at memory and ngage to aces definitive wath about thepant othesel Merging tw ofthe compost, crossover ers thi Tv peated inthis chape oat, one might say tat Cll, hugh ber brewed tide, signaling he intention proce an esa I oblographicalauteiction. PTR sat lntention signaled ll the more clearly in thé texts tha appear on the nse lve of the font and back ove Sf bes hisoes vee. Where we would normally expect some ki ‘of biographical note about the author, we are infact given two quo tations from Paul Auster’s 1992 novel, Leviathan: {Ske| was an artist, but the work she did had nothing todo with creating objects commonly defined as art. Some people called dhera photographer, other referred to her asa conceptual, still others considered her a writer, but none ofthese descriptions was accurate, and in the end I dont think she can be pigeon- holed im any way Her subject was the eye, the drama of watching and being ‘watched, and her pieces exhibited the same qualities one found in [her meticulous attention to detail, a reliance on arbitrary structures, patience hordering on the unenduable* ‘These passages doin fact describe Sophie Calle but via a fictional- ued version of her a character called Maria Turner, whois tobe found, in Auster’s novel. Indeed, the eagle-eyed reader of the novel may chance upon a sentence on the publication details page of Leviathan, according to which “the author extends his special thanks to Sophie Calle for permission to mingle fact with ficton’'To what extent, then, oes Calle's photobiographical essay mingle fact and fiction, and 10 ‘what extent does such mingling produce, or conwibute to, a concep= ‘alist or postmodernist ionization of photobiogeaphy? Fact and fiction clearly “mingle” in the eighth text-image unit of bes histoires oraies. Here, alongside a photo showing the pages of a hhandwetten letter, a short text relates hows, some years previously, Calle had paid a professional lotr writer one hundied franes to send her a love leter, something she had never yet received in reality (lig. 10.2) The result, she says, was a beautiful seven-page letter, pen- ‘written and in verse (DHV 25) The photo, in which one can make out the pages of the leer and even the to lines Calle quotes from It, henticates the story. The evidential force of the photo i ionized, however tothe exten that the story reveals what the leter on its own, and the photo of the letter on its own, cannot indicate; namely, that this isa bogus love letter, a pure ition. Is the point of this leony to ‘itique or deride the autobiographical impulse? Only in small part for the letter as ition is shown to have been both needed and appre- ‘lated, Thus the letter a fiction enters into one ofthe recurrent the- ‘atic clusters informing Call's work, that of loss and substitution, ‘which can take narrative foems that are as quietly poignant as they are sharply ironic Ms “The mingling of fact and fiction takes a different form inthe ninth textimage unit of Des histoires vraies (8g, 10.2). Here, a text "Les chats” (DHV 26)-briefly explains how the three pet cats Cale has ‘owned in her life came to die. The corresponding photograph shows three dead eats, or, to be more precise, three identical images of the same dead eat. Furthermore, one cannot be sure at the level of the referent whether these ae the desiccated, possibly even mummified cmains of rel cator some kind of sculpted simulation of such a state In this instance, fiction comes nto ply, insolar as the cats mentioned, in the text and those displayed in the photo cannot be co-rferental ‘Once more, however, the irony articulated by this nonconnection does hot necessarily override a sense in which the photo, by virtue of is Sophie Calle tes cats, om Des Moles oaies, 194 ‘contrived structure and stony texture, constitutes a kind of monument lo the three dead cats. The thematics of loss and substitution contin- vies to tease and touch in equal measure. ‘A similar irony of impossible co-eferentiality characterizes the Uhird text-image unit of Des histires vaies fig. 1.3), The text aocom> ppanying and narrativizing thisll too evident symbol of the male gen~ Nalin deserves to be quoted in its entirety: AL fifteen years of age Iwas afraid of men. One day, atthe restaurant, I chose a dessert for its name: ’A Girl's Dream.” 1 Toone To asked the yter what it meant, He replied that he was going Sophie Calle tre amar; fom Ds is ae 1994 to keep Ita surprise. few minutes later, the man set down, eso canis on TOR before me a plate contalning a peeled banana and to scoops of vanilla ice-cream, Then, amid general silence, he wished me bon appéce with a smile on his ips. Theld back my tears and closed my eyes, a8 Twas to do years later when, forthe first time, a man stripped naked before me. |A quinze ansj‘avais peur des hommes. Un jour, au restaurant, |e choisis un dessert pour son nom: “réve de jeune fille.” Je ‘demandai au serveur de quol ils gissait. I répondait qu'il me réservait I surprise. Quelques minutes plus tard, homme pposa devant moi une assiette qui contenalt une banane Epluchée et deux boules de glace 3 la vanille, Puls, dans le lence général 1 me soubaita bon appétit, sourire aux Keres, “a retenu mes arms et ferme les yeux ainsi que je le fis des ‘années plus tard, lorsque, pour la premiére fls, wa homme se mit nu devant mol, (DHV x4) Irony, the impossibility of “straight” autobiography, subsists here asa minor rather than determining factor. The dessert depicted in the pphoto obviously cannot be the “same” dessert as that referred to in the shore narrative text. The photo offersa reconstruction or illustra tion, As s0 often in er work, Calle uses photography to stage substi= tute Images or scenarios, With this act of substitution, however, Calle triggers a disturbing effect of miseer-abyme whereby the depicted ‘eferent, in all ts obscenity, seems to be claiming strong affinities with the depicting photograph, Both the referent and the photo are visual _ displays taking the form of images, defined by Patrick Maynard in his (recent book, The Engine of Visualization, as “units of marks and sur= | face, including unmarked bits of surface.” In other words, just a8 the photo frames, centers, and frontally registers the dessert as visual dlsplay st off against a neutral background, so the oval plate, whose shape reall a classi frame model inthe history of portraiture, per= forms the same pictorial service for its lewaly configured contents, That a similar parallel might be said to exist between the photogras ppher’s act and the waite’sactisnatlyifrather unwittingly suggested. [| by Maynard when, writing about depictive technologies generally, he ))\) Jobserves that “photography provides methods of marking surfices ‘that entice imagining” 1s that whieh is staged to be seen through a Wwindowr of representation always to some degree pornographic? And, Iso, what are we to make ofthis disturbing affinity? The narrativization ofthis photo resolves the particular problem of Jes own difference fram what ie depicts bulk ems 10 me to continue to _—_—_—$_$<$_$<$$ acknowledge the genera! problem, especially as it affects the woman Artist, of the complicity ofthe photographie with the pornographic ‘The particular problem is resolved because the narrative text helps us to understand that the point of the photo asa form of display is foren- sic rather than pornographic, This visual reconstruction takes us back to the scene ofa crime: to a sick joke that turned something assumed through the male gaze to be a gis!’ “dream” into something more akin toa blind spot, a visual trauma or phobia. The unexpected turn taken by the last sentence of Call's narrative powerfully conveys this trans- Formation ofa tasteless episode into a kind of scopic printal scene, sit- uated well Beyond the reac of irony. Soph Call, Reve de oe te, fom Des stores wmv, 1994 » ‘As for the general problem of the complicity of the photographic ‘ith the pornographic, this isan issue Kept alive precisely asthe upshot ofthe primal scene described inthe third of Calle’ histoires eraies. This upshot can be tracked, for example, through a theater of visuality that stages not only the “drama of watching and being watched” (as Auster ‘Pus i) but also that of looking and not looking. ‘This double drama ‘unfolds most notably through a thematics of dress and undress, mod- esty and immodesty. For reasons that are atleast parly explained in the episode tiled “Réve de jeune fille” Calles sensibilities as an ado~ lescent and young woman contained a strong element of modesty, of ppudeur. Enlisted inher work bath textually and photographically as a key @utobiographemo, Call's pudeur;iself pat ofa broader fragmen- tary Portrait of an innocent or naive subject, manifests itself most notably through past experiences involving preference for forme of dress over shows of nudity: Such experiences are never bluntly lronized by Calle, never simply avrbued to-an embarrassing past self Jong since superseded by an enlightened present self Her past fear of male nudity is foregrounded notably in the photobiographical unit tilled “Le peignoie” (The Dressing Gown), which directly follows A, Girls Dream.” The garment in question, photographed hanging phan- tomlke from a hook on a bare wall is narrativize as that regularly wor by the eighteen-year-old Calle frst lover over the twelve-month peviod oftheir relationship, not because of any wish on his part, but ‘because the young Sophie insisted he wear it whenever there was a ‘sk of his genitals being exposed to view, ‘The turn to immodesty is demonstrated in the sequence of pho- Cobiographical units immediately following “Le peignoit.” where Calle shows how, in what amounts toa willful inversion ofthe terms ‘of her phobia, she came to display her own body to various publics, ‘We see the twenty-seven-yearold Calle performing as 2 striptease artist in a Pigalle strip join, sporting a blond wig and rosos-style hat ‘with vel, in an at of self-exposure attenuated by the recurring in dence of modesty and disguise» Finally, following two text image units dealing with Calle the stripper third unit homes in on ato week period Calle spent asa model in a hife-drawing clas, The photo here (fig. 10.4) s ofa drawing of her posing nude, left hehind by one of the male students in the class after he had slashed it with a razor blade. What remains writes Calle, are “pieces of herself” "morveaus, de moi-méme” (DHV 23). The violence of the mule gaze, it would seem, echoes the fetishistic take of photography as, to echo the words of Christian Met, it cuts “into the referent, cuts off pieve oi fragment, a part object, for a long motionless journey of m0 return." A case could be made for believing that, when she was pro- ducing Des histoirs vraies, Calle not only was familiar with this famous essay, but was dialoguing with it, Metz himself mentions that psychoanalysis offer a description of the subject in which “the male features are often dominant, mixed with (and as) general features,” but does not consider how resistance to Such a generalization might affect his analysis of the fetishistic nature of the photograph, Calle clearly wishes to examine her own position asa woman photographer inrelation to this modeling ofthe photographic fascinum om fetishis- tic male desire. Evoking Freud's analysis of the fetish, Metz argucs thatthe “compromise” a providing a substite penis fr the one the woman is deprived of, the “compromise” that i specifically designed toallay male anxiety about castration, “consists in making the seen retrospectively unseen by a disavowal of the perception, and in stop- ping the look, ance and for all, on an abject, the fetish ,.. which was rear, just prior to, the place ofthe terrifying absence." By con- ‘rast, to go back to “Réve de jeune fill.” Calle offers us an episode in ‘which disavowal (or refusal of violently displayed teonic/symbolic representation of the penis as fetish-god “stops the Took” not by fixing iton an adjacent object but, far more intransitively, by the act of closing one’s eyes altogether. Does this result in a "feminizing” of the fetish, instanced, to0, in Calle’ obsession with clothes (the dress- ing gown, a wedding dress, and even a tie, sent to an acquaintance asthe first step toward realizing the “dream” ofthe perfectly dressed man), masks, and multiple identities? The double drama of watching and being watched, of looking and not looking, that traverses Des histoire ures is of course intimately hound up with a series of essential questions posed by photography and photographs. Inter ali, it poses the question of how, asa woman, Calle herseif happened to become a photographer. Thus, beyond its ironic distancing from the conventions of standard autobiography, Calle’ book, in its own compelling way, takes up and confirms 3 cen ‘sal preoccupation of autobiographical writing by photographers: 3 preoccupation dseribed by Chive Seotas “the exploration ofthe ambi {ultles and contradictions whieh surround [the vrter photographer] Felationship to er] medium." We are now ina position, 1 would sug- evaluate rather differently the significance of the closed eye ‘on the front and hack of Calle’ book, Calle in fct ensures that the reader of Des istotes vraes cannot leave its confines possessed ‘ofthe impression that this image serves merely to mark the instance of ‘an ironic clin dl for, in the very last photobiographical unit of the book (thats the list episod ofthe sequence tiled Le Mar: 10 réits) Sophie Cale, 1a ame ders; fram Des sors rae, 1908 she reproduces that image alongside a narrative concerning the frst ‘man she sept with after breaking up with her American husband, Greg, Shephard. Here (6g. 10.5), the image corresponds to a moment in the sory where Calle, spending her frst night with her new lover but believing she stil loved Greg, prefered t0 shut her eyes, for fear that she would sce her husband’ “ghost” and be invaded by the idea that this new man was not the “right” man (DHV 62). Not unlike the ‘moment at which the camera shutter cuts off the light being received by the negative, the moment when Calle shuts her eyes conforms to a temporality suspended between loss and substitution, have tried to point out how a number of Calle'sphotobiographical units contain, but are not ultimately contained by, tony. 1 various ways, these units steer a course beyond irony, opening the way for more pathicjempathic forms of self-exploration and sell-epresentation. 1 Want now to suggest chat cis push beyond irony is embodied als in the structure of Des histoies vrais asa sequence of photoblographical ‘nits. Just as the final sentence of the primal scene narrative lifts us clear ofironism, with unexpected power and poignancy, so t00 does the final unit in relation tothe series of units composing Des histires eraies(DHV 40-41) The text (ig. 106) begins by explaining hw Calle’ ‘great-aunt strove for six days to ight off the moment of her death until February 4, 1988, her hundredth birthday. She thus achieved her ambi tion of reaching the age of one hundred years. The object depicted in ‘he adjacent photo is introduced in the second part of the tex: Before dying, she had embroidered 2 sheet with my initials. offered it to my friend Herve, gravely ill atthe time, in memory fof that already faroff night when he had refused to share my bed. In this way I invited him to sleep with me just a litle ‘Also, | liked to believe that, having been embroidered by a ‘woman who had reached the age of one hundred through 3 fierce act of willpower, this sheet, aglow with faith, would sansmit her strength to him. ‘Avant de mourir elle avait brodé un drap a mes intiles. Je Yofiris a mon ami Hervé, alors gravement malade, en souvenir de cette mut, lointaine déj, oi il avait refusé de partager mon li. Je invita ainsi & dormir un pew avec moi. Et puis, jaimais | coire qu ayant éé brode par une femme devente centenaire {price une volonté farouche, ce drap, auréolé de fi, ui trans- smettrat sa force, (DAV qo) Reproduced in color, not black-and-white, and presented as a

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