“Patti Smith has accompanied me almost my entire life. I remember clearly the moment I heard the album Horses for the first time: in the Jecklin record store at Pfauen, where I spent a lot of time listening to music. There was that striking black-and-white cover with that androgynous person on it. The cover is by Mapplethorpe, who later became an important influence on my own work—though I didn’t know that at the time. Then came the first chords of “Gloria” and that voice. A revelation. I was incredibly moved. That was in the mid-1970s. Shortly after that, in 1976 it was, she gave her first concert at the Rote Fabrik in Zurich. I remember it vaguely, actually, only that Patti Smith spent a lot of time sitting on the floor, I couldn't see much, and some moron released teargas or something like that. For me, it was still impressive, I had only seen Suzi Quatro—also a darling—at the Volkshaus, until then. Over the next few years, I bought all of Patti Smith’s records, until she somehow withdrew and disappeared.

Yvon Baumann is a photographer and video artist, born in 1960 in Zurich.