When I was nineteen I took out a bunch of student loans and moved to Spain. I was really into the early work of Pedro Almodovar and the idea of being in a foreign land that was at a cultural crossroads (i.e. the aftermath of a dictatorship) fascinated me. It was an interesting time artistically. I lived with a group of young artists on an old cobblestone street in the red light district. The building where we lived was dilapidated and there was no heat so we lived in one room with a space heater for the course of the winter. I'd take long hot showers and make that into my private steam bath to counter the otherwise frigid conditions. No one had jobs or any money so we'd spend the days reading and taking siestas in our one inhabitable room, and in the evenings go to free art performances or sneak into art house horror films. It was a fluid life of gallivanting that inspired art making and so I began taking photos. I remember Corrine Day's images of Kate Moss in The Face at that time. I'd never seen anything like that. Those and William Klein's street photography really opened up something for me.