WHAT’S KEINOM?
- or the attempt to write a biography
Keinom is the alter-ego or pseudonym of me - Nicholas Ganz. I was born in the early months of 1976 in the heart of the Ruhrgebiet in Essen, Germany. Since the mid ‘90s I am painting graffiti in the streets and simultaneously started to take photos of my own works and the graffiti of other people. This laid the roots of my present artistic work.
In 1997 I wanted to create a special graffiti name for myself, that had no direct meaning instead of choosing a word from the dictionary. So I took some of my most preferred letters and created a name, that had no concrete meaning - Keinom. Keinom describes my artistic work and the world from where I take my inspiration, where I take refuge in and where I create my philosophy.
My graffiti photo-archive from the early years was the basis to start my first book Graffiti World - street art from five continents and to collect graffiti art from all over the world to present them in this work. It was first published in 2004 and got the chance to be released and also translated in 12 different countries.
Graffiti Woman was a natural follower of Graffiti World, as I discovered the lack of female artists in publications and so I filled this gap with this project. The book was first published in 2006.
Since 2005 I am mostly working with my photo-cameras and rarely paint in the streets or on canvas myself. My focus has been on documenting the social situations of ordinary people, their struggles and resistance movements. I have found my destinations quite often in Asia, where I first was very fascinated by the beautiful, but deeply troubled Burma (today’s Myanmar) and it’s lovely people. From my travels into this country with co-author Elena Jotow we have written our book Burma - the alternative guide, that was published in April 2009.
Beside all this writing of books, I have continuously published articles or photo-essays or contributed to other’s projects, that were released in different mediums.
Because of my work as author about the troubled people to recollect their bad memories of war or flight, I see the need to return something to these people, who I interview for my books or articles. So I founded the Keinom Foundation to collect donations for concrete projects or needy people as direct support. I also collect fair-trade products from Burma and Nepal to support other projects as a help for self-help.
Currently I am still stuck in Asia to dive deeper into the diverse cultures, ethnic peoples and various problems and crisis. Meanwhile I ended up in the mountainous country of Nepal.
In 2009 I have written my first text-book in German language with the title Die Menschen des Himmels - eine Reise zu dem Volk der Shan in Burma/Mynamar (engl. The heavenly people - a journey to the Shan people in Burma/Myanmar), that will be released in the beginning of 2012. It is about the ethnic Shan people in Burma, who are related with the Tais of Thailand. The book is a historic documentation of their troubled history up to this day, which I combined in an adventurous travel report.
A new book project is also in progress and my research is going to be finished soon, but the actual work is taking some time, maybe more than one year. More news about this present book project will be released here soon, so far I can only say that the book will be about the exiled Tibetans in Nepal, but what it exactly is about, you must see later.
Essen, 13. October 2011
Me photographing at Boudha temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, 2010 - photo by Tenzin Lhamo