From the introductory note: "My mother worked as a ticket seller at a cinema and, many times, when there was nowhere to leave us with my brother, she would take us with her to work. When the film was 'suitable', we would watch attentively and spellbound on the screen. During the 'unsuitable' ones, you’d find us in the projectionist’s booth, until the movie ended. 'The Paradise Cinema'. Almost directly across from the cinema was a Karagöz (Turkish shadow puppet) stall. The showcases with black-and-white photographs on one side, and opposite, a colorful world on cardboard and plywood. I don’t even know how this affair started, with the puppet master’s children taking our place at the cinema, and us passing to the other side of the street, inside the jasmine bush. … Several years passed, difficult yet beautiful ones, until I became a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Having previously attended the renowned Doxiadis School, with excellent performance, I found some ease with my studies at the Academy, which left me plenty of free time. So, whenever I wasn't wandering around exploring the city, I devoted many hours and late nights to sketching and then carving silhouettes and sets of Karagöz on cardboard. My involvement with shadow theater was intense back then. In one of our engraving classes, we were asked to design a Tarot deck as we imagined it. Beyond something vague, I had no idea what Tarot cards are. I bought related books and a couple of decks to inform myself, but I still couldn’t find the form I would give. What I was searching for, as usual, was right in front of my eyes, on the table, among 'chips' of cardboard, colors, and designs on rice paper…"