To understand things, to grasp their deep nature, I have to photograph them, the people, the world around me; I started at twelve and never stopped. The day I was put in a uniform at nineteen, my camera naturally moved from my jeans pocket to my fatigues, in 1980. During my twelve months of military service I photographed my life as a conscript, at least when I could, not when it was allowed, since it was forbidden, but when the moment lent itself, which was not often, given the meagre harvest of images for a whole year, since in the army one's hands are often occupied and one's head even less free; this is not a reportage, since too much of what military service was is missing, nor a documentary work, since there is neither argument nor angle nor writing, but simply a trace, the imprint of a conscript's life moments, a fragmentary testimony of what was, for two centuries, a defining stage in every young man's life.