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subliminal forms. In The Sleepers it is a woman’s gaze that is in control, often presiding over a male sleeper. In
The Sleepers we therefore find elements of Calle’s customary playfulness and mischievousness, in this case as
she turns the tables to distort classic gendered themes in artistic representations. Indeed, a strong feminist
agenda has been cited as an important theme in Calle’s work. (Chadwick, p. 111)
This blurring and crossing of boundaries are general themes which therefore extend to the act and the means of
representation, and not just to the specificity of the game itself. These are important points from the
perspective of lamination. Calle uses texts and photographs in her unique brand of conceptual art in order to
emphasise the characteristics of each medium, usually as evidentiary materials and narrative tools at the same
time. In Calle’s works, the factual and the fictional merge and fuse, just like the text and the photographs. Macel
defines Calle’s work as a series of ‘innovative criss-crossings of factual narratives with fictional overtones,
accompanied by photographic images.’ (p. 21)
Both writing and photography can hold claims to truth, just as they can both deceive. But a crucial point about
the concept of lamination is to emphasise not that texts are necessarily more reliable or truthful than
photographs or vice-versa, but that, as media forms, they function differently. Indeed, it is precisely these very
differences that encourage their strategic juxtapositions. Discussing Calle’s deployment of each medium, Macel
captures the sentiment: ‘In most instances, text is associated with image, in a kind of dialectic about issues to do
with the visible and the expressible (in words) – the sayable, otherwise put.’(p. 21) Therefore, Macel adds,
‘Sophie Calle works in the interstitial gap between photography and the imaginativeness of writing, where the
imaginary triumphs.’ (p. 22) Again, this dialectics is precisely relevant to lamination. Lamination is a sort of
dialectics, a quiet sort that is only noticeable when it is exposed by the critic or analyst. This relates to the
earlier comments concerning the productive tension that exists between texts and photographs as distinct yet
compatible media forms. The text and the photographs tend to borrow from each other; they each have certain
strengths and weaknesses, but they nip and tuck to produce a narrative; and the narrative that is produced
benefits from the influence of each. Calle recognises the importance of both. She writes: ‘In my work, it is the
text that has counted most. And yet the image was the start of everything’ (Calle, 2011). Calle’s first forays into
art, through her photography, have set in train not only a unique and remarkable style but a whole set of
discourses as well. In relaying this interpretation of The Sleepers, this ‘meta-lamination,’ I am helping to convey
its message at the same time as I am adding new layers to it. I am thereby discussing The Sleepers as a
lamination at the same time as I am incorporating it into a new lamination. This goes some way towards
explaining the dialectical function of lamination as a continuous process.
Calle’s work is so rich, varied and smart, that it has been referred to not just in the context of writing or art or
photography, 28 but in a number of other ways too: in the context of ‘ethnography,’ 29 or a ‘sociology’ of sorts
(Bois, p. 31) and even acting or ‘performance’ art (Calle, 2011). However, the suggestion that Calle is a kind of
sociologist is particularly intriguing. As Garnett points out, Calle has an ‘obsession with the sheer strangeness of
life.’ This is true, but it needs to be made clear that her obsession is with what is local, with that which is right
under our noses, but goes generally unnoticed (like the purloined letter in Poe’s short story); her observations
are often intended to point out that life itself – encompassing our social rules and customs – is the very thing
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