The Pocket Pencil
Yers Keller experienced the prisons of the Stasi in East Germany at the age of eighteen, served seven years in the French Foreign Legion, and encountered Théodore Monod in the desert before finally settling in Tours with his brushes and cameras.
His life is a travel journal — the story of a free spirit with a wandering eye.
Yers Keller was born in Leipzig in 1965, in what was then East Germany, a country confined under Soviet rule. As a child, alongside his parents, Dieter and Karin, who were firmly pro-Western, young Yers devoured beautifully illustrated books on the great museums of the world. It was his own way of travelling, from the Louvre to the Tate Gallery, via the Prado and the Guggenheim.
Pascal Landré NR
Yers Keller leafs through the travel journals he has filled during countless adventures and extraordinary journeys across the world. Destinations to dream of…
Egypt, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco, Samarkand, India, Chad, China, Paris, Bordeaux… The list goes on. Memories of a life lived at a rather restless pace.
Born in Leipzig in 1965, in what was then East Germany, the young boy is captivated by the field journals of Napoleon’s veterans, the *Grognards*, displayed in a small museum devoted to the great Battle of the Nations, fought in 1813, when Napoleon and his troops swept across the Saxon countryside. Pencil sketches made amid the horrors of battle leave him with questions. To bear witness, to remember, to leave traces. At any cost.
His passion for art takes him on journeys through illustrated books filled with masterpieces, most of them housed in places far beyond his reach: the Louvre, the Tate Gallery, the Prado, the Guggenheim, MoMA. Inaccessible worlds… The East German regime forbids travel, especially to the West. Trapped behind the Iron Curtain, Yers attempts to cross the Wall. In vain.
He is only eighteen when the Stasi imprisons him. In 1986, three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, he is expelled to West Germany. Fate leads him to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. France, the world, adventure. He will serve for seven years before setting off for Asia.
With a backpack, pencils and rolls of film, Yers embarks on an epic journey, tracing a vast arc between Paris and Beijing. The journey will last a year.
Upon his return, Yers settles in Paris, just two Metro stops from the Louvre. He comes to know its collections by heart, wandering among Delacroix’s paintings, Greek sculptures and the galleries devoted to the Italian Renaissance.
In 1997, filmmaker and lecturer Maximilien Dauber takes him on an expedition to the Ennedi region of Chad, accompanied by the renowned naturalist Théodore Monod. Chad is not unfamiliar territory to Yers: ten years earlier, he had been there as a Legionnaire. But this time, the adventure is altogether different.
Accompanying scientists through breathtaking landscapes, exploring gueltas and remote oases, feels like stepping into another world. He draws, photographs, takes notes.
Yers discovers Egypt and its astonishing past. Maximilien Dauber and his team embark on a new documentary, featuring a character known as the “travelling painter”, somewhere between Dominique-Vivant Denon and David Roberts, drawing, cataloguing and recording a thousand and one details throughout these explorations, which have since become legendary. Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Abu Simbel. Based between the banks of the Nile and the Temple of Medinet Habu, the film crew is intoxicated by the almost biblical landscape of Luxor’s West Bank.
It is love at first sight. The Valley of the Kings, Ramses monuments stretching as far as the eye can see, the Temple of Hatshepsut, the tomb of Seti I, inaccessible to the general public, and dazzling frescoes honouring the departed pharaohs — all of this, accompanied by the murmur of Muslim worshippers praying at sunset, completes the picture of a world suspended in time.
These journeys give rise to several travel journals, published by ASA in Paris and A. Barthélemy in Avignon.
Today, Yers works in another field: website design and development under the WEBECCO label. Serving clients such as the Château de Tours and companies based in the Touraine region, including Tigerbird, Le Cercle Avocats, La Cipat, Michel Audiard, among others, Yers supports his clients in developing their marketing and communications strategies.
Yers also teaches at BRASSART – Tours Campus, a graphic design school specialising in visual communication.
Relentlessly exploring what might be called the “art of pixel manipulation”, he draws on an unsuspected palette of creative and technical skills, opening up a wealth of possibilities for expressing his distinctive flair for digital imagery, page layout and colour composition.
With Yers, the spirit of the travel journal is never far away, as he awaits the next page…
By Country & Hôtels
“The arts were born of the need felt by sensitive imaginations to preserve memories.”
— Eugène Delacroix