Exquisite Pain

A poignant visual record of the obsessive nature of failed love by a leading French contemporary artist.

Over the last two decades, Sophie Calle has made it her business to follow, peek into, and illuminate the lives of people she barely knows. In Exquisite Pain, Calle turns her attention to a life-changing experience from her own past.

This book is a visual record of the time in 1985 when a lover failed to meet Calle as promised in a hotel in New Delhi. Calle was devastated. As always, she kept everything from that journey—photographs, ticket stubs, visas, and letters—each image rubber-stamped to mark the countdown to the fateful day of her heartbreak.

On her return to Paris, she asked a group of friends to answer the question, "When did you most suffer?" Their stories of pain, each of them accompanied by a photograph, interplay with Calle's own story and daily reflections—"It is now seventy-five days since the man I love left me"—creating a testament to the heartache of romantic rejection. 130 illustrations, 71 in color.