Suite Vénitienne

Sophie Calle's first artist's book, chronicling her two-week covert surveillance of a stranger she followed from Paris to Venice in 1980, reissued by Siglio in a definitive English-language edition designed in collaboration with the artist.

After following strangers through Paris for months, photographing them and logging their movements, Calle happened to meet one of her subjects, a man she calls Henri B., at a gallery opening. Learning he was about to leave for Venice, she decided to follow him there. Over nearly two weeks, wearing a wig as a disguise, she tracked his movements through the city in time-stamped entries, combining methodical investigation (calling every hotel, visiting the police) with arbitrary chance (following strangers, like a flower delivery boy, hoping they might lead her back to him).

First published in 1988 and long out of print, this edition presents Calle's photographs and diary-like text as originally conceived, printed on Japanese paper with a die-cut cover and gilded edges. The book established the investigatory, rule-bound method Calle has used across four decades of work spanning photography, writing, and installation, and that made her one of the defining figures of conceptual art's engagement with surveillance and the ethics of looking.