My stepfather gave me a Kodak camera when I was 17 years old. I started working at a local photo store in Le Havre, France, taking passport pictures and photographing weddings.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.
I myself was a wedding photographer when I was, like, 16.
My dad was actually against me being a photographer. He thought it was a dead-end job and that you end up doing baby pictures and weddings.
I've been an amateur photographer since my teens.
I knew from the first moment I picked up a camera, on my first school assignment, what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was going to find a way to travel the world and tell the stories of the people I met through photographs.
I became interested in film making at around 16, when I discovered a friend of mine had a HI 8 camera which belonged to his father, which we were forbidden to use.
My father did advertising photography.
When I was fifteen years old, my dad won a video camera in a corporate golf tournament. I snatched it from his closet and began filming skateboard videos with my friends.
I got a camera when I was nine years old and it wasn't until I was a model that I realized you could be a photographer for a job.
I did have a very advanced grandmother, my mother's mother, who wanted to buy me a camera. My parents wouldn't let her. Eventually she won, and I got a camera in about 1948, a Voigtlander.