Voir la mer

"Voir la mer" ("To See the Sea," 2014) documents people who had never seen the ocean encountering it for the first time.

Calle invited fifteen residents of Istanbul, most originally from inland central Turkey, down to the shore. In her words: "I took 15 people of all ages, from kids to one man in his 80s … once we were safely by the sea, I instructed them to take away their hands and look at it." Filmed from behind by Caroline Champetier, each person eventually turns to face the camera, and the video captures whatever the moment brings to their expression. The project exists as fourteen five-minute videos; this Actes Sud catalogue, issued in a Braille edition, reproduces Calle's photographs of the same subjects.

Calle, a French conceptual artist born in 1953, has returned repeatedly to first encounters and thresholds of perception, a concern that also runs through "Blind," her book of testimony from people who have never seen at all.