Prior to creating the installations for which Kabakov is known worldwide, Kabakov created fictional albums. He has created a total of 50. Each album is a story about one character who is often able to overcome the banality of everyday existence, or, "of a small man, possessed by big ideas." The first ten albums is a series called "Ten Characters" (1972–75). In the story of the Ten Characters, a man, attempting to write his autobiography, realizes that nothing much ever happened to him, and most of his life amounted to impressions of people, places, and objects. So he creates ten different characters to explain his perception of the world.