From Curator: Observation 3 / Sophie Calle, For the Last and First Time

Observation 3—The Blind and the Sea

This observation is from the work The Last Image (2010) displayed on the second floor. In this series, persons who had lost the ability to see were asked to describe the last thing that they saw. The installation consists of portraits of 13 persons, their answers and a photographic representation of those answers by Calle. In describing the last thing they saw, the subjects inevitably spoke about what caused their blindness, stories that encompass various accidents, incidents and illnesses, each heartbreaking.

Of the 13 subjects, there is one who is photographed with the sea as a backdrop. Despite the fact that all 13 subjects live in Istanbul and are surrounded by water, his is the only portrait in which the sea appears, forming a beautiful horizon at his back. I realized that this composition was identical to that of the portrait of the blind man in Calle’s The Blind (1999), the subject of Observation 1. In that work, a man blind from birth says the sea was the most beautiful thing he had every “seen,” which tells us that the act of “seeing” involves not only the sense of sight. If this is so, then this now sightless man standing with the sea at his back can expect to continue “seeing” rich new images in the future. Indeed, he appears to be doing that now, with ears attuned to the sound of the waves, eyes closed, quietly taking in the ocean air.

If we look back on all the galleries in the Hara Museum, one realizes that these two works, each composed of a blind man and the sea, represent the beginning and the end of the exhibition, and that they are positioned directly opposite each other. The first one is on the right wall of the first gallery, while the other hangs on the opposite wall in the last gallery. Given the fact that absence is a major theme in Calle’s work, these two works and their placement seem to be an expression of Calle’s belief in the possibilities of human perception and imagination and how people strive to compensate for each and every “absence” that arises.