Shadow began when Calle moved back to Paris and became fascinated by people she saw walking around in the street. She began to wonder what they were doing when they were not at work and decided to follow them. Calle would choose to follow someone in particular by chance. Eventually she started taking pictures and notes for herself. She once followed one of her subjects all the way to Venice. She began taking pictures of him and what he was doing, and where he was going. She would wait for him at his hotel, follow him until she lost him and then find him again. She would follow her subjects until she decided to stop and find some else to follow and the relationship would end. Although Calle is a photo conceptualist, and I will argue that she is also a relational performance artist because of the individual relationship that she builds with her subjects through the camera. Calle Documents her and subject's "joint journey" that they go on together. She is able to rediscover a place through her subject. A portrait of the subjects rituals emerge through her photographs and notes.
Later Calle decided to flip the camera on herself in her series Detective after she asked her mother to hire a detective to spy on her and take pictures. Later she would compare her own notes of what she was doing and how she was feeling with the notes of the detective. From this a "double portrait" emerges.
Calle began her work in the 70's and continues to produce work up through the present. More recently she represented France at the 2007 Venice Biennale with her work "Take Care of Your Self".
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