Sophie Calle: Overshare
January 30, 2026 – May 24, 2026
@ UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art
REVIEW by Alexander Laurence
I have been looking forward to this show foe ages. I first met Sophie Calle in the early 1990s. She used used to have art shows at the Fraenkel Gallery. She was a big presence in the Bay Area. I met her at a lecture at Cameraworks. At the time she had done Suite Venitienne and The Sleepers. These are represented in this retrospective. She wasn’t really a photographer. Sophie Calle was a conceptualist who dealt with themes of voyeurism and surveillance. This was in the pre-digital age and the pre-internet era. She was as much a writer as a photographer.
In the part of the show called THE SPY, Sophie Calle is following strangers on the street. She is pretending to be a maid and taking pictures of travelers. The Sleepers is a photographic record and diary of strangers sleeping in Sophie Calle’s bed. Cash Machine uses early digital video of strangers using as cash machine. These people look like ghosts of some past age.
In The Shadow, Sophie Calle hires a detective to follow her around the city. In Autobiographies, Sophie Call sends her bed to a man in Northern California. She encountered people on top of the Eiffel Tower. Sophie Calle was in bed. She would spend five minutes with each person. True Stories is collection of objects picked by Sophie Calle. There is also a tribute to Frank Gehry.
Some of the end of the show is about Sophie Calle’s parents. There is a video of her mother. They both died. Sophie Calle takes her mother’s portrait and jewels and brings them to the North Pole.
There are some secrets locked in safes.
At the very end, is a video of people in Istanbul. They are people who have never seen water. The video is at the North Sea. This show is very mysterious and special. Sophie Calle makes us think about human issues: social media, the self, reflections, and death. What does it all mean?
