Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is among the books which do not easily lend themselves to translation. It needs a lot of comments and explanation, but, at the same time, you can hardly find a book which would be more captivating, funny, mysterious and favored. There are quite a few mysteries associated with the book itself, its author and the characters he invented. To nobody’s surprise, Alice keeps attracting the attention not only of authors and literary experts, but also of numerous artists and illustrators. Many of them were desperate to create Alice’s visual image and her never-never land. It is quite understandable, because the word and the image have always gone hand in hand. Our consciousness is governed by words and sounds, but the domain of the subconscious is dominated by images. The main task Vladimir Klaviho-Telepnev faced in the project was to create photo illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Vladimir made it a point to express photographically such fine and intangible categories as emotions, mood and inner feelings of a small heroine put in her imaginary fairy-tale country. The project is about to convey a fragile image of a girl-cum-woman so characteristic of the puritan world which used to surround Carroll through a sensual albeit mystical style of Russian symbolism characteristic of the early last century. All Vladimir’s illustrations have been made in accordance with the monochromatic photo technique with the use of sophisticated color nuances. To emphasize the image Vladimir also makes use of still-life motifs – roses, books, threads of pearl. Each detail can convey either additional or different meaning, something akin to Carroll’s book based on complex mathematical and logical associations. An air of sorrow is seen in the figures and postures. The landscape, costume and composition convey the search for the lost ideal. Symbols of the idealistic world of children’s dreams are set against the tough reality of the actually existing world. In his photos Vladimir creates a sensual and mystical “blue” world of modernism which, alas, is no longer around. He is doing his best to reinstate ancient techniques of the book publishing business and turn it into an independent branch of arts. Among other things, the uniqueness of Vladimir’s Alice project is determined by the fact that for the first time ever all the phantasmagoric inhabitants of Wonderland have been produced for the purpose. Vladimir has made it a point to reproduce in his photos the atmosphere of Alice’s world as accurately and expressively as possible. The characters invented by Lewis Carroll and smartly animated by Vladimir Klaviho-Telepnev – creatures that really capture our imagination; they negate their artificial origin and start living on their own. They are more than ordinary models. Their facial asymmetry easily enables them to change their expressions, show different sentiments or dispositions.
