I was working alongside my studies for the house of Karl Lagerfeld, in IT.
And I was invited to what would become the first fashion show of my life.

I wasn’t in the best spot. I didn’t know the customs.
But there, in all their majesty, were the clothes I had only known by reference.

That day, without realizing it, I stepped into what I barely dare to call my first pro-shoot.
No one expected me.
Except myself.

I have never forgotten that moment.
It was magical.

My camera — the very first, a gift from my parents — was a Zenit TTL, analog film, manual focus.
Nothing was quite right:

• the wrong position,
• the wrong film (Ektachrome for outdoors),
• focus often off,
• shutter speed sometimes wrong.

Yet there was the essential: the magic of the moment.

Forty years later, I remember it as if it were yesterday.
I found the Ektachrome, developed and digitized them,
and they still carry something — a scent, a memory, a spark.

I don’t believe in a photographer’s “signature.”
It feels too rigid, too prescriptive — a superficial distinction in a world where everything tends to become uniform.
    – I believe in eclecticism.
    – I believe in the instant.
    – I believe that the purpose must guide the means, and the photographer must fade for the moment.

Style must serve the moment, not impose itself upon it.

If I could do it again, I would do things differently.
I would use a digital camera, probably a modern autofocus lens instead of my old Helios‑44.
Old? Maybe — I recently bought a KMZ Helios‑44 from the 1970s, the best generation.
Mixing old and new for a unique result is one of my many “differences.”

If I could do it again, I might not do it better,
but I would keep that forty-year-old gaze:

• awed by what I was seeing,
• simply happy to be there,
  right in that very moment.