Uldus Bakhtiozina is a Russian photographer and visual artist who studied Photography at University of Arts, London, at Central Saint Martins College. She worked as a fashion and art photographer and is now back in Russia working from her own studio of visual arts.
Russ Land is a series of pictures inspired by Russian folk legends and fairy tales. Some of them remind me of stills from silent movies:
I was interviewed for a new short comedy horror story I have coming out with F’d Up Fairy Tales, a new collection in which a few stories are released each month of the year. Mine will be released February 15th, January is available now here and here.
The entire thing is completely daft and the subject of boob milk somehow raises it’s sticky head, so enjoy!
Today’s google doodle is Charles Perrault. Well done Charles, you’ve made it! Fairy tale fascination is nothing new, children watch the Disney versions over and over, but as I grew older I realised there was something else to them, something…untamed.
A Jim Henson television programme from the late 80s told me that yes, there was something to that theory. Based on folk tales from the past they were often more unpleasant than the Disney versions – don’t let yourself be led astray, or such and such will happen.
Jim Henson’s Storyteller, Sapsorrow, an early version of Cinderella where she has to marry her father
That’s the gist of many of them: dark predictions if you don’t heed your guardian’s warnings. Little Red Riding Hood was much more The Company of Wolves than a story about a little girl avoiding a scary animal. In truth she was on the brink of sexuality and told not to talk to strangers on the way to her grandma’s lest they be an evil seducer.
But that’s not all they are. The listener no doubt felt a thrill of fear and disgust and the teller would delight in their reaction. They’re projections of worst case scenarios told safely indoors, the Urban Legends of their time. I got the same excitement and revulsion when I first discovered the Snopes website and saw society’s basest worries right there on the screen. There’s no PC filters here, everybody fits a stereotype and everyone wants to secretly maim you or put gerbils up you (neither sounds good).
Just like the Prince’s mother from Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty plans to eat his daughter, stories are whispered of meth taking baby-sitters mistaking children for meatloaf and putting them in ovens. A still earlier version of Sleeping Beauty has the Prince impregnating the Princess IN HER SLEEP, while other versions have the mother-in-law not only eating her son’s first daughter but secretly, apparently for a laugh, feeding her to the King. All of which sound a little like the tales passed between lips of scary foreigners and drug addicts.
So next time you listen to a biased and poorly researched story told to you by the bloke in the office who heard it from Fred just imagine: One day there might be a cartoon version where they get married at the end.
Alongside ‘regular’ stories I also write rude ones, and here’s another of them. Sugar Cravings is about an eternally youthful witch in a gingerbread bread house who sometimes gets lonely. Read it here.
Upon my search today for a home for one of my stories I happened upon this article. If you write fantasy, magic realism, urban fantasy or any other variation this should be rather useful, have a look.
Toodlipipski!
Madeleine Swann 