ONLY FOR YOU
Your beauty is
A flow of silent lucidity
Deep beneath your
Toned skin and fine bones
That is in baptismal gown unworn
Beauty radiates deeper inside
Surrounded by your aura
Your eyes and lips sparkle with life
With a transforming grace
Pulse with love
Your body‘s outward shell
Enriched with natural charm
With delicate scent within
Beyond your smiles
Are layers of warmth where
Dwells a beautiful heart
Better than
A million bony faces
You are a reason
To release one's feelings
With the warmth of love
As a woman of perfection
-- Alexander Khokhlov & Valeryia Kutsan
Photographer Alexander Khokhlov and his make-up artist wife Valeryia Kutsan developed a new visual art genre ("alive posters") that uses the human face as a canvas. "The main challenge," he explained, "was to make the image flat. You know, how our faces have volume and the light mostly accentuates this volume of the face. Valeriya’s challenge was to put make-up on a model in a way where she looks absolutely like the picture; and my task was to make the light flat and not bring volume or depth into the image. This is unusual for me and for many photographers because I like the volume and depth which light/shadow creates. In this case everything was opposite." Each image typically took up to six days to create, with several hours set aside for make-up, an hour to shoot, and then days to retouch.
ReplyDeleteBorn on May 9, 1982, Alexander was first impressed by live performance photography. However, at the end of 2008 after attending his first studio master-class by photographer Vladimir Kalinin, Alex’s perspective changed and he quickly became interested in moving his photography into the studio, and creating studio and “beauty” photography.