Blind

"Blind" (2012) gathers three decades of Sophie Calle's work on blindness, built around a simple question: what does someone born without sight picture when asked to describe beauty?

The book combines three earlier projects. In "Les Aveugles" ("The Blind," 1986), Calle questioned people born blind about their idea of beauty and paired their answers with portraits and photographs she made in response. "La Couleur Aveugle" (1991) sets similar testimony against discussions of monochrome painting. "La Dernière Image" ("The Last Image," 2010) records people who lost their sight later in life describing the last thing they saw before losing it. Actes Sud issued "Blind" in print and Braille, running roughly 90 color images alongside the transcribed interviews.

Calle, a French conceptual artist born in 1953, builds her work from other people's testimony and private histories, a method that runs through her wider catalogue of artist's books, including "Suite Vénitienne," "The Address Book," "The Hotel," and "The Sleepers."