Seeing as I’ve been camera happy recently, when I was home I took some time out to check out Exposed – Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera at the Tate Modern.
There were some absolutely brilliant photographs and I spent what felt like an eternity watching Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency One of the photographers that really stood out to me was French photographer/writer/artist Sophie Calle.
The Hotel (1981) documents the vacant hotel rooms of guests at a hotel in Venice. “Undercover” as a chambermaid, Sophie learns about the lives of the tenants by going through and photographing their belongings. She meticulously searches through the tenants’ baggage, diaries, and even the garbage to piece together their lives.
She makes note of the smallest details such as “a dirty comb with broken teeth” or a “mind-boggling pair of shoes.” From her scrutiny she pieces together where the people are from, what they are doing that day, what they like or dislike, and so on. In this work, Calle displays her photographs accompanied by texts describing her findings
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I’ve often wondered about the things that chambermaids see from the mundane to the insane. Makes you think twice about the “dirty laundry” you leave behind at hotels right?
If you’re in London -go see it, it’s on til October 3rd.