It is not entirely true that “Des histoires vraies” by Sophie Calle is now being published in German for the first time.

In 2004 Prestel Verlag published thirty-six of them, translated by Elke Bahr and Sebastian Viebahn.

Because these “True Stories” are a

work in progress

that the artist has been publishing in French since 1994, adding new stories each time.

The current edition was published in France 2020 as “Des histoires vraies - 63 récits”.

Now at Suhrkamp there are “65 stories”, translated into German by Sabine Erbrich, so two more have been added;

which they are is not communicated.

Rose-Maria Gropp

Editor in the features section, responsible for the “art market”.

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But what does it mean - true? And in general with Sophie Calle, this grand and unique confounder among contemporary artists? In any case, it doesn't mean - it really happened that way. Each of these short stories consists of a photo and a text, always on only two book pages side by side or the picture placed over the text. They all have a headline, nothing is wrong with them from a formal point of view.

The first story is called "The Portrait"; it begins with the sentence: “I was nine years old.” One could have expected that Sophie Calle would depict herself in any of her various aggregate states, which she does in some of the stories. What can be seen, however, in black and white, hung in front of a bare wall, on the lower edge of which is a banal socket, is the portrait of a young woman in half profile on “an old Dutch painting, dated to the end of the fifteenth century, with the title, Luce de Montfort '". Wherever Sophie Calle gets that name, it's pretty.

In truth or in reality, it is a fragmentary, presumably photographic reproduction of Rogier van der Weyden's famous "Portrait of a Young Woman", whose doublet in the original is also not "pink", as the flowering dreams of young women may be and how Sophie Calle claims it. And the

récit

next to it reports on the skepticism of the narrator about her "biological father". Which is true, of course: the young woman in the old portrait has “turned her gaze to the viewer”.

Warned in this remarkable way, it becomes clear that the artist's gaze at the viewer, at the reader, is just as decisive in all stories; let them figure it out. (Almost) all of them are "I" stories; many could be described as unheard of incidents, condensed into a few lines. In “The Nose” the grandparents want to have “a few flaws” corrected by the granddaughter; the cosmetic surgeon kills himself two days before the operation, which solves the problem. In “The Wonder Breasts”, surely one of the earlier stories (the corresponding breast photo was already on the cover of “True Stories” from 2004), Sophie Calle diagnoses that her breasts suddenly changed in 1992: “All alone, without Interference or external influence,miraculously. I swear. Victorious, but not particularly surprised, I attributed this achievement to twenty years of frustration, desire, daydreams and sighs. ”In 1992, Sophie Calle was thirty-nine years old. However that may be a confession, the formula “I swear it” can be forgotten, as disturbed as it is amused.