It All Started With Dad’s Leika (38 Pics)

I grew up in a farming family. I was in a children's home and was adopted by my parents when they were old enough to be my grandparents. It was a different time back then and the children's homes were happy about every little mouth that no longer needed to be fed and found a warm nest.

But I am an absolutely lucky boy because the couple who adopted me had a beautiful farm and I was given a complete adventure playground, including love, warmth, and joy.

One of my father's treasures was his Leika camera, which he had bought together with his brother-in-law (a city merchant) in Frankfurt am Main and which I was allowed to borrow from the age of 10. That's how it all began!

Long before there was digital photography, I took pictures, had them developed (I had to save up for that... even as an adult) and then painted with watercolors and any other suitable pencils and brushes.

Today I can do that with a computer, but the system is the same.

I usually "break into lost places", like a thief who wants to steal paintings, and as a witness of the times, I am there with great respect to capture the special beauty of transience. The romance of decay, which also shows again and again that hope has all the reason in the world... because in every end, however dilapidated it may seem, lies a new, perhaps magical beginning.

I still live in this small town in Germany and travel across the countryside and to the outskirts of cities to discover old, abandoned buildings and breathe new, imaginative life into them with my adaptations.

No matter what I do with these pictures, one thing remains the same: I am a contemporary witness, I preserve a memory of them and give them the honor that even if the excavators have long since done their work of destruction, people can still look at them once again...

Compassion is the new cool

Helpfulness is the new heroism

Courage is the new test of endurance

With love,

Isonyx

More info: isonyx.de