In 1983 a book of photographs and text by Sophie Calle and Jean Baudrillard entitled Suite Venitienne was published by Editions de I'Etoile and Cahiers du Cinema in Paris. The genesis of the book is a strange story. In 1979 the French photographer Sophie Calle had invited twenty-eight friends, neighbours and strangers to sleep in her bed one after the other for a week while she photographed them and wrote notes. Subsequently Calle followed strangers around on the streets of Paris without their knowledge, photographing them for some months. In February 1980 she went to Venice to follow one of these strangers who was going to the city. She again kept notes in a diary and photographed the stranger and the streets of the city. The book consists of the Calle diary and her black and white photographs in the first part and Baudrillard's essay in part two, entitled Please Follow Me. The English translation of Baudrillard by Dany Barash and Danny Hatfield published by the small Seattle-based independent outfit, Bay Press, is the extract published here. Baudrillard's interest in photography was consistent from at least the early 1960s and he frequently wrote about photography in his books, but his own production of photography can be dated from the mid 1980s until the time of his death. He began producing photography in earnest shortly after his collaboration with Sophie Calle was published. Frequently his own photographs concentrated on rooms and streets and were not unlike the Calle photographs in the book extracted here.