The Address Book by Sophie Calle
Calle’s written accounts of these encounters—juxtaposed with her photographs—originally appeared as daily serial in the French newspaper Libération over the course of one month in 1983. Now, The Address Book, a key and controversial work in Calle’s oeuvre, is being published for the first time in its entirety in English as a beautiful trade edition artist’s book, designed in collaboration with the artist.
As The Address Book entries accumulate, so do the vivid impressions of its owner, Pierre D., while suggesting ever more complicated stories as information is gifted, parsed, and withheld. A multitude of details—from the seemingly banal to the potentially revelatory—are collaged into a fragile and strangely intimate portrait of Pierre D.; while Calle, over the course of her pursuit, also turns the interrogation on herself, her own fears, assumptions, and obsessions.
Part conceptual art, part character study, part confession, part essay, The Address Book is, above all, a prism through which desire and the elusory, persona and identity, the private and the public, knowledge and the unknown are refracted in luminous and provocative ways.
Hardback / 104 pages / 26 b/w and 2 color illustrations / publication date: October 30, 2012
Siglio is an independent press in Los Angeles publishing uncommon books that live at the intersection of art and literature.
More Siglio titles featuring image+text works by women artists:
It Is Almost That: A Collection of Image+Text Work by Women Artists & Writers,
edited by Lisa Pearson
It Is Almost That collects twenty-six visionary image+text works by women artists and writers including Eleanor Antin, Fiona Banner, Louise Bourgeois, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Ann Hamilton, Jane Hammond, Susan Hiller, Dorothy Iannone, Alison Knowles, Adrian Piper, Charlotte Salomon, Suzanne Treister, Carrie Mae Weems, Unica Zürn, among others.
“Learning to read art, as Lawrence Weiner long ago exhorted, is not a simple process. Where the textual meets the visual, demands outnumber easy pleasures. It Is Almost That is rich in both challenge and satisfaction.”
–Nancy Princenthal, Art in Print
“Because the frame is image+text we’re reminded that all of us generally do more. Female artists don’t just stay in their disciplines; we experience, we forage, we play. Intuitively and practically speaking It Is Almost That is, in effect, a handbook. It … shows us how to be an artist.”
–Eileen Myles, The Poetry Foundation
HB / 296 pages / over 250 half-tone illustrations / Published 2011
Torture of Women by Nancy Spero
Torture of Women is Nancy Spero’s fierce and enduring contribution to contemporary art, to feminist thought and action, and to the continuing protest against torture, injustice, and the abuse of power. This epic artwork, juxtaposing testimony by female victims of torture with startling imagery from the ancient world, is as powerful now as when it was created in 1976. With an essay by Diana Nemiroff, a story by Luisa Valenzuela, and a text by Elaine Scarry.
“Made almost thirty years ago Nancy Spero’s Torture of Women is a seminal work in the history of contemporary art. A model of how appropriated words and images from multiple sources can be spliced and shaped into a forceful, coherent statement about the sexual, social, political, and existential dilemmas and dynamics of the modern world.”
–Robert Storr
HB / 156 pages / 96 full page color illustrations / Published 2010