Les Tombes #17, (Mother, Father)

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The art of Sophie Calle combines text and image, performance and photographic documentation and fact and fiction in order to address issues of identity and social interaction. Her first series, Les Tombes, consists of framed photographs of headstones in a California cemetery. These grave markers identify familial relationships but bear no names. Calle’s images are straightforward but nonetheless evoke strong emotions because we cannot help making associations with our own experiences of death and loss. The artist installs this work several ways. The photographs can lean against the wall, as they do here, drawing attention to their physical existence as objects. They can be hung in a more conventional manner to stress that they are images. They have also been shown laying flat on the floor.

Keywords

Gelatin Silver
Rocks
Cemetery
Death
French
Contemporary Art
Photography
Black and White