I came to California because I was traveling
For seven years, I trekked around the world
I went to America, New York a year;
and before that, I had been in Mexico;
and before that, in Greece
I was not interested in anything then
I was lost
I didnt know what to do with my life
I happened to be in Bolinas,
renting the house of a photographer
So there was material around, cameras, printing room
I went to the graveyard,
and I photographed two graves
and realized their strangeness
Because they didnt give a name of the person,
just said father, motheror was it brother, sister?
And I called my father,
who always told me that the day
I would know what to do with my life,
he would help me
And I said that I had been doing photos,
that I was in interested
And he said, Okay, come over to Paris
and I can give you a roof and food
So I went to Paris
But I didnt really know what I was doing,
so I made one or two projects,
more to keep busy,
not knowing where it was going
Until one year later, I did a project called
The Sleepers,
where I invited people to sleep in my bed
And one of the women I invited,
that I had met in the market, I think,
was the wife of an art critic
And she told him about this story,
he came to see me,
and invited me to show in the modern art museum
of Paris,
in a group show for young artists
And so he decided for me, in a way
My father was an art collector,
so there were works of art on the wall,
a lot of pictures with text, like Duane Michals
Image and text, I used in the beginning
maybe because my images were not that good
Ive always liked to write
So its this kind of element, you know,
doing pictures I liked,
having to obey to my fathers request,
the need of doing something,
the vision of someone else putting me in a show
all this made that I became an artist,
without really deciding it before
