Manifesto

What's Keinom?

- or the attempt to write a biography

Keinom is the alter-ego or pseudonym of myself - 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 so far.
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 as a journalist or author 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 the travels into this country the book Burma - the alternative guide was published in April 2009.

Beside writing these books, I have continuously published articles or photo-essays or contributed to other’s projects, that were released in different mediums.