In 2017, Sophie Calle initiated a socio-historical reflection on the transformation of men and women’s criteria and expectations in their search for a love match. She collected adverts published in hunting periodicals and on dating websites from 1895 up to recently. In Sophie Calle’s ongoing series À l’affut, each artwork consists of two ads from the same decade, one redacted by a man and one by a woman, and of two photographs: one represents a hunting lookout spot, and the other one a prey. The viewer can freely associate each picture with the female or the male advertisement, thus calling into question the traditional and gendered perception of heterosexual matchmaking. In this panorama of partner searches across the 20th and early 21st centuries, the conceptual artist masterfully illustrates the evolution from the prominence of concerns regarding wealth and status to the importance now attached to potential matches’ geographical proximity and mobility. À l’affut, a poetic weaving of texts and images characteristic of Sophie Calle’s artistic process, shows how the apparently very intimate and personal quest for a significant other is deeply contingent on social and historical conditions.
This full-fledged portrait of partner search in modernity follows several works by Sophie Calle on the theme of love and its setbacks. Her first major piece addressing this theme is Exquisite Pain (1984-2003), a series of photographs narrating the days preceding a painful breakup and those paving the way to her recovery. Since then, notable examples have included Take care of yourself at the Venice Biennale in 2007. For this later work, she asked 107 women of different professions to interpret a break up letter, once again unveiling the social prisms interfering in this seemingly personal and intimate experience.