Les Fantômes d'Orsay, Sophie Calle's exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay, photos

A return to the artist's footsteps... This is what the Musée d'Orsay is proposing with an exhibition of Sophie Calle's work, entitled Les Fantômes d'Orsay, on view from March 15 to June 12, 2022. It focuses on the period during which the artist lived in the desertedHôtel d'Orsay, just before work began on transforming the station into a museum. In her abandoned room, 501, Sophie Calle felt"the desolation of a place, like an archaeological space where everything had been abandoned".

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So she took photos, collected documents, objects, guest files and notes addressed to a hotel employee - named Oddo - and invented a world, her "ghosts", which she would later draw on in her artistic work. It was during her confinement, in 2020, that she came up with the idea of an exhibition on the traces of her past. A veritable quest"to find the key to an unsolved enigma that found its symbol in the figure of Oddo".

Photographs, objects, customer files... these are just some of the materials on display, enabling visitors to discover"the personal traces of the experience lived by Sophie Calle and by all those who stayed there, worked there, and whose tiny, moving signs she has collected". Objects that become"objects of excavation and ready-mades, traces of a past so close in time and yet so far away". A total work to discover, for all photography lovers!