Over 20 years ago, starting with her series The Sleepers, which included photographs of friends and strangers sleeping in her bed accompanied by text describing each "sleeping session", Sophie Calle has demonstrated a fascination - perhaps even an obsession - with the question of what is public and what is private, and where the boundary lies between them. She also seems to have relished her frequent role as voyeur and chronicler, denying her subjects (often including herself) their privacy and pushing that boundary until we are reminded that it is often nothing more than an imaginary line that most of us have resolved not to cross.

Like a true artist, Sophie Calle has played many variations on this theme over her career. In her 1980 Suite Vénitienne, she followed a man from Paris to Venice and surreptitiously photographed him for almost two weeks. The first several days of this project involved some frustrating detective work on her part to simply locate in which hotel the man was staying. Had she not been so engrossed, so committed to doing this, she might have given up on the project - and much might have been different for Sophie Calle in the last two decades. The following year, she returned to Venice and took a job as a chambermaid to produce The Hotel. In that work she examined the personal belongings of guests and the state of their rooms while they were away, creating conjectures (but definitely fictions) about who those people were. She has also used herself as subject in shows such as Double Blind, Autobiographical Stories, and Exquisite Pain. In these works, we are also left to ponder the lines between fact and fiction - what is the plain truth, where has it been stretched, and what is total fabrication?

In Public Places - Private Spaces, now at the Jewish Museum in San Francisco, Sophie Calle approaches the theme of privacy from two different angles at once. Captured in and around Jerusalem in 1996, she both examines current artifacts of Jewish law called eruvim that surround the city, and she probes for the private stories of people that are tied to with public places within the city. This work fits into a single room of the compact museum that currently houses it. A map of Jerusalem, about 5 feet by 7 feet, fills the center of the room. On the map lie fourteen framed 5x7 black and white photographs, and a similar number of texts in 8x10 frames. Sophie Calle calls these the stations. Around the room, hanging on the walls, are twenty large framed black and white photographs, each about 5 feet high by 1 foot wide, of tall poles strung with wires at the top. These are the eruvim.

On their own, the 34 photographs, although all clear representations of their subjects, are not all remarkable or terribly interesting. Clearly, Sophie Calle is not primarily interested in their quality as the subject of her show. She uses photographs in her work, but she is not a photographer. The 14 texts add a significant measure of depth and interest. Those willing to take the time to read and consider them will get much more from the show, but still there is even more layered meaning. Those with an understanding of Jerusalem's religious and cultural history (or at least willing to do a little work to gain that understanding) can extract even more from this show. This conceptual depth is Sophie Calle's calling card, and her ultimate challenge to her viewer. Perhaps she considers her work in light of her own tenacity in Venice 20 years ago by asking the viewer "How committed are you? How far will you go to reveal my meaning?" That also means that her shows are not for everyone, and will not be appreciated by those looking to briefly examine surfaces during a stolen moment of a busy day.

The Eruvim

Ancient Jewish law (still actively observed by many Jews in Jerusalem as well as other parts of the world) prohibits carrying articles outside the home on the Sabbath. This law, however, also provided for the extension of the bounds of the home to include enclosed walled spaces, such as the home's courtyard - or even entire walled cities - as private spaces where articles could still be carried. As the world's old cities expanded beyond their walls, the religious law was modified by what was in essence a convenient loophole. A series of poles surrounding those parts of the city beyond the walls could also serve as this boundary. (Each pole is called an eruv, with eruvim being the plural.) The law required that each eruv be at least 4 meters high, and connected to all the others by an unbroken series of wires strung from spikes at the top of each pole. In essence, this construction formed a sparse wall with a series of immense "doors" in it - but still a wall by the definition of those who wrote this law and those who accepted it.

So here is Sophie Calle's first point: Because it suits their needs, Jews, even modern Jews today, are willing to accept this physical yet ephemeral boundary of privacy. The eruvim are truly incapable of keeping anything in or out, and yet they are accepted as readily by some as are the conventional boundaries of privacy, which are also often flimsy - and yet are accepted by most of us. The latter is a boundary that Sophie Calle has made a habit of crossing.

The Stations

The 14 texts each tell one person's story of a private event that took place in a public space in the city. These involve tales of love (both blossoming and dying), accidents, attacks, shared whispers, and the inevitable changes that time will bring. In one story, a man recalls a field and a large rock where he played as a child, yet the photo for it shows the outside of a wall surrounding the President's Residence. Beyond it, hidden from our view, lie the field and the rock. This place has been transformed: once public, it is now private. This wall is real, and solid, and only memory can cross through it. At least two stories that Sophie Calle has chosen to include also reference Jerusalem's religious and historic context. One takes place at Christ's tomb in a crowd on Armenian Easter, and one recounts walks across the old city on the Via Dolorosa.

After getting each story, Sophie Calle went to the appropriate location and took a photo. The 14 photos are arranged so that each is placed over its corresponding location on the map. Although the texts and photos are directly associated with each other in the show's catalogue, I could find no such association evident in the exhibit itself. The viewer must try to figure this out - or spend some time with the catalogue and then return to the show (as I did).

The photos and texts of Christ's Tomb and the Via Dolorosa (literally, the way of pain) are clues to another meaning contained in The Stations. These choices were not accidental. Neither was the selection of 14 stories. The Via Dolorosa is the site of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross recognized by those of the Catholic faith. Each of the stations stands for an event that occurred during Jesus Christ's walk with the cross to his crucifixion on Good Friday, such as taking up the cross, falling three times along the way, being nailed to the cross, and being laid in his tomb. Many Catholic Churches contain 14 plaques depicting these stations. A person "making the stations" in church goes to each one to pray and meditate about that particular event that Jesus went through. Pilgrims who travel to Jerusalem follow in Jesus' footsteps when making the stations, stopping at the actual locations. These are 14 well-recorded moments of one man's private pain and suffering, leading to his death, yet they have been made so public that they form the basis for a religious ritual observance of prayer and reflection.

And here lies the second point: What does Sophie Calle hope to accomplish with her revelation of fourteen other moments, each tied to a specific place in Jerusalem? If nothing else, I expect that she wants us to stop at each and engage with her, and reflect on her issues of privacy, her questions about boundaries, and these fourteen personal stories, rather than rushing off to the next gallery to see what's being shown there.