Sophie Calle’s Neither Give nor Throw Away begins with material damage rather than a pristine photographic archive. While preparing an exhibition at the Musée Picasso in Paris, Calle found that a storm had brought water and mold into her home, severely affecting numerous artworks, among them photographs from Les Aveugles (The Blind). Published by Actes Sud in 2025, this 80-page artist’s book turns that accident into its central condition: images survive, but in altered and unstable form.

The project takes its title and premise from an idea by Roland Topor, who buried an old sweater he could neither give away nor discard. Calle extends this predicament from possessions to artworks. Damaged photographs from Les Aveugles appear alongside other rain-struck pieces concerned with death and loss—dried bouquets, images of graves, and paintings referring to her mother’s final word. Clothes and other personal belongings that she cannot bring herself to relinquish further complicate the boundary between archive, keepsake, and residue.

Decay is not treated simply as a subject depicted within the images. Simulated traces of water and mold enter the book’s graphic language, allowing the contamination of the original works to shape the publication itself. Fifteen color images of the exhibition installation are inserted through the pages; readers may place them wherever they choose, using printed picture-frame corners or disregarding those cues. This element of rearrangement makes sequencing provisional and gives each reading a slightly different relation to the exhibition.

For collectors of artist’s books and contemporary photography, the publication merits attention for the precision with which concept, damaged source material, and reader participation are joined. It records an exhibition while refusing the neutrality of a conventional catalogue. Preservation here does not restore an earlier state: it makes deterioration visible, then asks what it means to retain an object that can no longer remain unchanged.