Nikki Sixx’s Photography Featured on Leica Camera Blog

Motley Crue co-founder and bassist Nikki Sixx is also an acclaimed and successful photographer, and several shots taken during a trip through Canada are featured on the Leica Camera Blog. The images focus on the troubled and addicted men and women who often hide in the shadows of big city buildings and overpasses.

Sixx has been taking photos for decades but recently became more serious, publishing a best-selling book called 'This is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography, and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx' in 2011. He says his new dedication is a result of growing older.

"I’m 54 years old," he says. "I have more years behind me than there will be in front of me. You hit a place where you want to reflect; maybe it happens sometime in your 40s."

His subjects in this series include a prostitute and several drug addicts plus a woman pushing her wheel chair through an alley and several men who appear to be homeless. Sixx admits he's drawn to the darker side of a big city like Vancouver. One series shows a woman named Lonnie who is shooting up.

"Then she asked if it would bother me because she knew I was a recovering addict," he recalls, speaking of his heroin addiction. "Such compassion." Sixx didn't introduce himself as Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue, and it's not clear if any of his subjects where aware of his fame. They'd often talk, and he'd help them with money if they needed it or just give hugs if that's what was called for.

The photos are in black and white and all very revealing. Sixx says he prefers that to color because color distracts from the story.