On the cover, a triumphant little girl poses, bare-chested, cross-legged, sunglasses on her nose and mantilla on her head. Daughter of a ‘divorced father and of a mother who travels’, she spends the summer with her grandparents. On the last page of the book, it is a radiant woman who takes up the same pose, some fifty years later, in New York.
Between the two images, over hundreds of pages and photos, fifteen years of continuous creation pass, marked by spectacular exhibitions: ‘Voir la mer’; ‘Prenez soin de vous’; ‘Rachel, Monique’. One thing is certain, between 2003 and 2016, the French artist Sophie Calle (b. 1953) was a busy bee.

The first survey M’as-tu vue? (2003) recorded her work from the very beginning, from 1980 to 2003. Ainsi de suite (2016) presents the remaining of the inventory up to today. An artist’s book and ‘catalogue raisonné’ at the same time, this publication of more than a kilo and a half offers a visit into the marvellous, literary, photographic, adventurous, playful work of Sophie Calle.
In it we find her way – texts and photographs that tackle the tales of banality – and her obsessions, the loss, the absence, and the lack, declined in the course of projects born of the events of her own existence. Mistress of distance, faithful to the inspirations she unfolds as much as she deviates them, Calle has gained, project after project, the recognition of the institution without ever losing the fervour of the general public.

So close and so distant, the artist occupies a very special place in the contemporary artistic landscape in France but also and perhaps especially in the world, where her exhibitions have been traveling for years now.
Calle is an observer of others and of herself, in all its capacities. For more than three decades she has made her life and that of others her works (even the most intimate moments). Using different media, her books, photographs, videos and objects form a diary, a record of her life and her encounters with others. Ainsi de suite encompasses all what Calle stands for. The book is her ultimate record where texts, images, different textures of paper, sizes, colors come together. This is perhaps the best way to discover her and her eccentric artistry.