Jean-Patrick Mothes

Filmer * Photographer

(Echoes of the Past)

I can’t think of photography without thinking of my grandfather’s Leica M3, that small, heavy thing he carried like a secret. It smelled of leather and old dust, the metal cool against his palms, his fingers moving over the dials as if tuning some ancient instrument. It wasn’t just a camera. It was a vessel, a quiet keeper of time.

I was a boy then, too young to know its worth, too wild to care. But I knew beauty when I saw it. The way the light folded into its lens, the way it hung at his side like a trusted dog. I’d watch him raise it to his eye, a slight squint, a held breath, and then—click. A sound as soft as a bird landing on a branch.

The Leica is gone now, disappeared into the slow erosion of time, lost to hands not my own. But twenty years ago, I found my own relic—an old Canon A1, bought in some dim shop for 150 francs, the kind of place where forgotten things wait to be chosen. It wasn’t grand, but it felt right, as if it had been waiting for me all along.

I still carry it, still listen for that quiet click, that hush of film advancing like the turning of a page. Because an image isn’t made of technique or knowledge. It is born the moment a feeling stirs inside you, something nameless and old, something that demands to be seen. And in that instant, before the shutter falls, the world is yours.