Let us discover ‘A Yellow Leaf’ through the eyes of Michalis Moulakis.

How can the short journey of a yellow autumn leaf towards the ground lead us to discover a different way of looking at our world? And yet, the combination of Michalis Moulakis’s tender text and Filippos Fotiadis’s distinctive, photographic illustrations creates a symbolic fairy tale that will introduce young readers to ideas such as life and rebirth, the perception of reality, and the balance between the forces that coexist in the world.&The author describes how the original idea for the book came about, as well as his collaboration with the illustrator: The idea for A Yellow Leaf came, in a way, literally out of the blue. I was half asleep in my bed. My eldest son, who was three years old on that distant Sunday morning, pointed to something outside the window and said, ‘The yellow leaf is falling from the tree.’ As if a secret chamber had opened in my mind, that phrase instantly revealed the whole story to me. I wrote it down as quickly as I could, for fear of forgetting it.  Philip was one of the few people to whom I showed the text. He told me he liked the story, and I asked him to illustrate it. We both agreed straight away that we didn’t want the leaf character to be depicted in a human-like way. No eyes, no little hands, no little feet. It was absolutely vital to us that the leaf looked completely natural in every illustration. The big challenge for Filippos, then, was to convey the full range of emotions experienced by the leaf throughout the story solely through the natural poses in which it is depicted.  The very distinctive visual approach we eventually settled on emerged only after the illustrations had first gone through a great many different techniques and trials. It was a project that—without exaggeration—took several years. However, the shadows and depth of the final image serve the story in a truly unique, perfectly fitting way. Read the first few pages of the book here. Join us on Thursday 8 June at 7.00 pm, to celebrate the book’s launch and view the exhibition of his original drawings at the MARTINOS exhibition space: