It’s 1993, the summer of love. In California. Me, as a young Chilean photographer come together with a collective called GENERAL IDEA.  They are gay and irreverent, and they launch The General idea´s fin de siecle and GENERAL IDEA: Art, AIDS.  They built a space with thousands pills of AZT at SFMoma, in San Francisco. That was their fin de siècle perspective. And for me was an open door. Plus, San Francisco, a beautiful city in the avantgarde on building open societies. I made a photo series of Gay couples and people walking and sharing in streets of San Francisco in 1993. Castro street as a colored and an open image of my fin de siècle. 

This series was exhibited at Museo de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile, in the collective exhibition Selección Matisse, Fotografía, 1996.  Each photo was laid out on white cardboard, mounted on a 3mm steel sheet, and the images were accompanied by collages with persuasion phrases to use condoms as an advice for keeping yourself safe. Everyone does things their own way but, maybe it’s safer to do it that way. 

At first, the series was rejected by the organization. When I called to know if I was clasified, the girl in charge told me it wasn´t. I got so mad, so mad I shout her. And in the same conversation I taught her on rationality and good sense. Finally, the work was hunged in the middle of the exhibition room of the Museum. The quality of the other works were a normal stage. And I should be won the prize. But my life would have been so much different, me one year in Paris learning french and studing photography. I´m too shy for that.