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Sophie Calle has built a unique career as a conceptual artist using a combination of texts and photographs in a
range of projects. This mode of expression via texts and photographs is undoubtedly the most obvious and
telling feature of Calle’s oeuvre; and it is well known that the collaborations between these two media forms
are crucial in conveying the meanings of her projects to the reader or viewer. 1 In what follows, I will also
address this crucial facet of Calle’s work. However, in an attempt at some kind of theoretical originality, I will
not discuss it simply in the context of art or aesthetics. Rather, focusing on the sociological relevance of Calle’s
use of texts and photographs, I shall invoke them in the context of a concept that I call ‘lamination.’
Calle’s work is ideal subject matter for a discussion and analysis of what I mean by lamination because
lamination is a metaphor of construction involving the fusion and collaboration of textual and photographic
data in the production of works, which lend themselves to sociological analysis on account of their
anthropological or ethnographic relevance. I argue that lamination produces various meanings, which are
dependent on the specificity of the texts and images at hand, and which relate to such themes as materiality,
narrative, association and memory. 2 Specifically, I will discuss how each of these themes is refracted through
Calle’s 1979 work The Sleepers, her first artistic project, 3 in which she invited twenty-eight people to sleep in
her bed in continuous eight-hour ‘shifts’ over nine days (between April 1 st and April 9 th of 1979). 4 In so doing, I
will refer not only to the sociological relevance of issues concerning perceptions of public and private spaces,
but also spaces that exist between texts and photographs as media forms; how these are exploited for effect by
Calle; how these spaces are overcome (or not); and what this means from a semiological and sociological point
of view. That is, I shall read The Sleepers as an example of lamination.
The Sleepers and the Blurring of Boundaries
Sophie Calle is well known for her unique brand of ‘socially engaged’ projects, 5 regularly involving strangers
and members of the public, often unwittingly, in her work. Her oeuvre, as a whole, can be understood as a
series of games in and through which she conducts bizarre and interesting social experiments, all of which
involve a dialogue between texts and images (of various kinds, but especially photographic images), and all of
which involve Calle herself as a main character. In all of her projects Calle plays with social and spatial
boundaries; and the role played by the texts and the photographs contributes to this effect.
In the case of The Sleepers, as we shall see, the boundaries are numerous; and they are made blurry purely by
the strangeness of the concept that lies behind the project. Calle introduces the project with a textual
introduction (she always provides an enticing little synopsis in this way): ‘I asked people to give me a few hours
of their sleep. To come sleep in my bed. To let themselves be looked at and photographed…’ (1996, p. 21). On
numerous levels, the crucial blurry boundary to be identified is therefore between the public and the private.
Calle’s own bed(room) was the physical setting for the game itself; and its photographic and textual
representation in/as an art exhibit and a book renders it a public spectacle. However, the state of sleep is
perhaps our most intimate and private of inner, personal spaces. Despite her efforts, neither Calle nor her
readers can gain access to this from the sleepers’ point of view. Then there is also the peculiarity and
awkwardness implied in Calle’s request itself. From the point of view of the participants, it should be said that
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