Sophie Calle: Neither give nor throw away

The book traces the transformations undergone by a series of portraits from the exhibition ‘Les Aveugles’ following a storm. Mould had taken hold of the photographs, and the author could not bring herself to throw them away as they were.

Shortly before the opening of my exhibition “A toi de faire, ma mignonne” at the Picasso Museum in Paris, a storm caused damage to my storeroom and mould spores seeped into “Les Aveugles”. According to the conservators, it would have been better to destroy the works. But this series had meant too much to me to simply throw it away. So I decided to let the mould take its course, whilst taking photographs as time went on.