Jérôme Sessini

It was my first assignment abroad. I was a young freelancer for Gamma photo agency, and when I arrived at the Gamma offices, the bureau chief needed a photographer to travel to Albania immediately with some French Kosovar volunteers who planned to join fighters of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army). So, he asked me bluntly, 'You want to be a reporter? Are you ready to go now?' I replied that I needed time to organize the travel and my life. He walked away and came back with 30 rolls of film and 800 dollars, 'Now you're ready. Good luck. Call me when you are in Albania.' An hour later I was on my way, lost and scared. This photograph is one of the first I made the day I arrived in Tirana. I think it's an image that reflects my state of mind at that moment: chaotic, filled with doubt and fear. As a young photographer, I was very influenced by black-and-white photographers — especially Bruce Gilden and Mark Cohen — so I think that part of me was trying to copy them by introducing the maximum number of elements into the frame. Looking back, I realize how much my approach has changed, as I look to make photos better by subtraction rather than addition.