Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

Great art about love, in all its messiness and splendour, requires an artist who is willing to be vulnerable and to risk embarrassment – an artist like Sophie Calle. The French conceptual photographer, currently the subject of a fine show at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, has chronicled passion, heartbreak and recovery in intensely personal exhibitions and books, some of which are so emotionally naked that looking at them can feel like an invasion. Take Care of Yourself (2007), her greatest work, began when she received a breakup email from her boyfriend, identified only as ‘X’ in the project. The tone of the email was cold and mechanical, and Calle couldn’t make sense of it, so she showed the text to a close friend and asked her to explain it. Then she showed it to another woman, and another: 107 women in total, each of whom she photographed and then asked to interpret the letter according to the practices of her profession. Some of the viewers were fellow artists.