These figures are a manifestation of my obsessive devotion to black-and-white darkroom practices during much of my troubled youth. Most of the reminders and souvenirs from that clumsy period of my life are gone due to constant house moving, excessive country hopping, flooded basements, and ultimately a couple of self-combusting bulky hard drives in the 90s that destroyed most of the scanned stuff.

Creating these characters was a lot of fun, especially since, as it turned out, all seven possess qualities I usually look for in my close friends. They appear quite serious and sometimes a bit rigid, but after spending enough time with them, one inevitably discovers their appreciation for the hidden pleasures of being weird or simply ridiculous. They carry themselves in a poised, slightly dark, and sometimes over-dramatic manner, with a refined taste for the surreal. Most importantly, they seem to have courage and a sort of innate dignity, all combined with a generous amount of self-sarcasm—usually acquired by the time one finally manages to get over oneself. In my book, once we realize it's all a big cosmic joke, that's the only way humans can go on living without intensive use of mood stabilizers or hallucinations about flying bearded super-beings. Last but not least, looking at them, you just know they can make a killer pineapple daiquiri, and as we all know, that's a superpower not to be underestimated.