Sophie Calle (born 1953) North Pole

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF SHIRLEY ROSS DAVIS
Sophie Calle (born 1953)
North Pole, 2018
Pigment print, housed in a wooden box frame with embroidered woolen cloth; accompanied by a Fraenkel Gallery Certificate of Authenticity, signed and dated in ink; this work is no. 2 from an edition of 3 plus one Artist's Proof.
20 1/2 x 31 1/8 in. (52.1 x 79.1 cm.)
overall 26 1/2 x 37 in. (67.3 x 94 cm.)
Provenance
Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, 2020

Note
Sophie Calle's atmospheric photograph North Pole belongs to her series Because, in which the title of each work explains the artist's relationship with her own image-making and narrative memory. Each print is housed in a wooden shadowbox that is draped with a felt curtain embroidered with text that justifies the image. Although Calle's work is often comprised of photographs and text panels in diptych and triptych form, Because presents a departure: the viewer is asked to consider the photographer's textual narrative first, before gaining access to the image.

Taken during the artist's travels in 2008, North Pole is what Calle has dubbed an "orphaned" image captured at a moment when she felt compelled to take a particular photograph without an obvious connection to her other works. The text reads: "Because I am there, on the bridge / Because I am with Marie who doesn't take pictures / Because we are alone / Because that's what you do when you are at the ends of the earth / Because I won't be back to the North Pole anytime soon / Because I can't resist / Because of the silence / Because of the solemnity / Because of day when it is night / Because of the blue, the clear sky, the grey sea / Because it is the night of September 11 / Because I want to believe in this image / Because you never know / For the memory of it."