I have been interested in anonymous compositions for many years, seduced by their intricacy derived from strict necessity and chance.

The drawings of cables in the sky of Osaka and their utility poles that I worked with in 2004 are the work of electricians concerned only with making the length of the cables as short as possible. The traces, spills, marks and tears on London pavements that I photographed in 2014 are the unintentional imprints of millions of walkers, bikes and trotinettes. Although I have painted, drawn and photographed crazy pavings since the 1970s, it took me until now to work with them in a series and, soon, also a book.

Crazy paving can be found on all continents. While the quality and shape of the stones or cement varies, their arrangements are similarly unplanned, made on the spot with the available stones, jigsaw puzzles resolved by workmen who never read Baudrillard. There isn't very much of a difference between a crazy paving in Japan or in Dona Lúcia's patio near Sesimbra, in Portugal.

This image was taken in Japan, on Shiroyama Hill, overlooking Kagoshima City, a small city on the island of Kyūshū, living with a quiet, live volcano on its shore. It shows the pavement of a short ramp leading to a low, stand alone building, a rather forlorn restaurant from the 1980s with a garden and viewpoint. While I paced about with my camera I was observed by a motionless cat with half-closed eyes that made me think of Pierre Loti.

Very much like electricians dealing with utility cables in Japan wanting to use only the strictly necessary amount of cable, the literary work of those involved in composing titles, labels and captions has an inherent limitation on the number of words as its guiding principle. To describe, summarise or expand in a limited mode of presentation something that may be present or represented by an image can be tricky.

Kagoshima has a gigantic crag on the vast grounds of a historic house, Sengan-en, the seat of the Shimazu clan. In the early Nineteenth- century, Shimazu Nairoki, the 27th head of the clan, employed 3,900 men for three months to carve into it the Chinese characters used at the time, eleven metres high, the inscription 'A crag of great height', designed to convey the rock's grandeur and dramatic scale.