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The Blind #19
Artist
Sophie Calle
(Born 1953, France)
Date1986
MediumColor photograph, black and white photograph, text, and wooden shelf
DimensionsOverall: 47 1/4 × 51 3/4 in. (120.02 × 131.45 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase made possible by a grant from The Burnett Foundation
Object number1995.36.A-D
Status
Not on viewCopyright© 2020 Sophie Calle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Category
Label TextThe French conceptual artist Sophie Calle is known for documenting activities that raise questions about voyeurism, privacy, love, and authorship. For her 1986 series The Blind, Calle asked roughly two dozen strangers, all of whom had been blind since birth, to describe their personal notions of beauty; she then created photographs that attempt to translate their responses. Each piece in the series consists of a photograph of the blind person interviewed by Calle, a framed image of his or her typeset response to Calle’s question, and the artist’s photographic interpretation of the response, which rests on a shelf. A meditation on the subjective nature of beauty, The Blind suggests the ways in which text and images succeed, as well as fail, in their communication of meaning.
One of the most unexpected details about this project is that most of the subjects in The Blind describe their sense of beauty in visual terms. The Blind #19 presents a black-and-white photographic portrait of a short-haired woman wearing dark sunglasses. To the immediate right of the portrait hangs a frame with her printed words:
On the shelf underneath the framed quote is Calle’s visual interpretation of the woman’s description: a color photograph of a man, seen from behind, lying in a bed of tousled white sheets. Dramatic morning light streams in from the window just out of frame, capturing the toned musculature of his shoulders and upper back, as well as the crevices between the fabric folds of the linens. Mediating between sight and its absence, and between language and its visual evocations, Calle’s juxtapositions of photographs and text suggest that truth often lies in the spaces between.
One of the most unexpected details about this project is that most of the subjects in The Blind describe their sense of beauty in visual terms. The Blind #19 presents a black-and-white photographic portrait of a short-haired woman wearing dark sunglasses. To the immediate right of the portrait hangs a frame with her printed words:
The man I live with is the most beautiful thing I know. Even though he could be a few inches taller. I’ve never come across absolute perfection. I prefer well-built men. It’s a question of size and shape. Facial features don’t mean much to me. What pleases me aesthetically is a man’s body, slim and muscular.
On the shelf underneath the framed quote is Calle’s visual interpretation of the woman’s description: a color photograph of a man, seen from behind, lying in a bed of tousled white sheets. Dramatic morning light streams in from the window just out of frame, capturing the toned musculature of his shoulders and upper back, as well as the crevices between the fabric folds of the linens. Mediating between sight and its absence, and between language and its visual evocations, Calle’s juxtapositions of photographs and text suggest that truth often lies in the spaces between.