Chervona Vorona Creates Fairy Tale Worlds Infused With Her Heritage

Chervona Vorona isn't new to having her work go viral. It's likely you've seen a few of her images over the years without even realizing who created them. The picture at the head of this post, and the set it's from, are currently making the rounds on the internet, and the papier-mâché beast is certainly an impressive addition to the lovely styling and work of this Ukrainian artist's photography, and well worth the attention. Rather than just focus on this trending set of photos which incorporate her design, creations of costumes, props, her photography and digital work, we thought we'd also hand-pick some other pieces of her work to showcase a little of the variety she's created that you may not have seen before, with an emphasis (for us) on those that evoke untold tales.

Though most of her work doesn't appear to have titles, she calls this first one, "We Are Sewn To Our Land", which is a great expression of her whole artistic approach:

The following are a very brief selection from her various portfolios. Some have multiple pictures in the same shoot, (see the kitsune example below) while others are stand-alones. Either way, we think each of these shows her preference and propensity for creating stories in a frame.

(You can see some of Chervona Vorona's digital process in creating one of the kitsune portraits, in a brief video HERE.)

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Paradox Magazine:

Tell us a few things about your studies and your decision to become a photographer. 

Chervona Vorona: I studied to be an illustrator. But my job is only remotely related to my education. First I worked as a stylist and a decorator, but photography was what I needed to complete my aspirations. 

What is the role of imagination in your work? Your work is full of fairy tale images. 

Chervona Vorona: Fairy tales, this is the most important thing, my main inspiration, therefore, my images are of different ages, but they are all united by magic or a hint of it.
Maybe it’s because of the books read in childhood. Although I now read mostly fairy tales! Imagination is very important in my work! But of no less importance are things like observation and resourcefulness.

Darina (Dary), or Chervona Vorona, as the internet knows her, makes her own props and costumes and apparently often starts with headpieces, building the look from there. Her talents include altering old dresses, like the one for Beauty and the Beast, for which she used an old wedding dress, and the traditional folk-design wings she constructed for her "Wings of Hope" spread), as well as doing the styling of the shoots and digital work afterward.
A nice personal touch is that Dary also uses dresses designed and created by her grandmother, Zoya, who, at 66 was finally able to fulfill a life-long dream, after working most of her years to date in a factory to raise her granddaughter and two other children. The Rapunzel dress below is one of Zoya's creations.

And here are a couple more shots from the striking Beauty and the Beast shoot:

As a bonus here's a very quick video of Dary creating the Beast puppet:

We love how Darina makes creative use of her heritage, often in subtle ways in the intricacies of the designs or placement of things and people, and isn't afraid to try different styles (like this HERE - yes, that Julia Margaret Cameron-looking photo is hers!) as well as 'traditional' ideas of fairy tales, in creating photographic tales and designs. It gives her work a unique and memorable flavor.

You can find much more of Dary's photography on her Facebook page HERE and her Instagram HERE.

Sources: HERE, HERE and HERE

Article: "How video games like 'The Witcher' are saving Slavic folklore" & Introducing a New Eastern European Fairy Tale Based Family Game 'Forest of Sleep'

Folktales from the Slavic countries (primarily Central and Eastern Europe) form one of the richest and most diverse mythologies in the world. Traditional Western European fairy tales may have become watered down and sanitised over countless retellings and interpretations, but Slavic mythology still retains its bite. (alphr.com)

This topic has been much in discussion in the fairy tale newsroom these past few weeks, so when this article popped onto our radar we had to share it.

THE WITCHER, RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER & THEA: THE AWAKENING
The Witcher is officially based on Polish folklore as it's main source, but it clearly' borrows' from other Slavic (and Northern European) neighbors as well.

Here are some excerpts, complete with a historian/anthropologist with a special interest in folklore chiming in:

Slavic stories are different to tales from other cultures. Unlike typical Western European stories, commonly based on wars of competing ideologies, Slavic folklore – and other Eastern European stories – are more often about individual human traits, rather than good versus evil. 

..Slavic mythology features prominently in Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher novels, as well as the associated video games and the soon-to-be-filmed series for Netflix. These are new stories that were populated with creatures and monsters from Slavic folklore, and told with a distinctly Slavic flavour. For example, it could be argued that the immortal crones of Crookback Bog in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are representative of the Baba Yaga myth... 

...The Witcher games are also full of spirits that are bound to specific locations in the game, with tragic backstories that can be unravelled as part of protagonist Geralt’s investigations into the monsters he hunts. “The most fascinating aspect of Slavic lore are the ‘unclean spirits’ attached to specific locations, such as the home or the barn,” says Nicole Schmidt of the Mythos Podcast. “There is the Bannik, the spirit of the bathhouse, and the Poludnica, a malevolent female spirit of the harvest field.” 

...Dr David Waldron is a lecturer in history and anthropology at Federation University, with a special interest in folklore. He explains: “[Slavic tales] have a distinct ideological difference to Western science fiction and fantasy. Battles between good and evil, and opposing ideologies in general, are seen as inherently destructive. You find the ultimate values being placed on the immediate kindness, integrity and compassion to those around you. Ideologies tend to suppress that for the ‘greater good’. I find something quite laudable in the Slavic approach to ethics,” he adds, “and think it could be argued Eastern European stories led to the ambiguity we now see in modern fiction like Game of Thrones or even 
in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where toxic masculinity is the villain.” 

The ambiguous morality of Slavic folklore, and the focus on the individual rather than the greater good, translates well into the player-focused decision-making of video games. Video games are also greatly focused on spaces, which gives a lot of scope for stories of “unclean spirits” to be woven into the detailed environments of worlds like The Witcher 3’s – often as enemies to be fought.

You can read the whole of the article HERE.

There is an older article, titled The Myth Behind The Monsters of The Witcher 3, citing the specific folkloric inspiration (and differences) for the game too. You can find that HERE, and we've included some excerpts below as well. The monsters listed are:

• Alps  - vampiric-like elves, that seek out female dreamers and twist their dreams into nightmares
• Leshen (Leshy) - "gnarled, root-like monstrosities can be found in dense, ancient forests and are fiercely territorial. Their attacks manipulate nature itself, using roots and branches to assail their opponents", though The Witcher has added an element of Wendigo to them, making them more malicious than mischievous as per Slavic folklore
• Noonwraiths - again The Witcher has amped the horrific aspects, but in folklore, they are the personification of heatstroke, with Summer field workers being vulnerable to their attacks
• Botchlins or Mylings - basically tragic infant zombies that cannot rest due to "being discarded or aborted without burial or a given name". They hunt for expectant mothers to drain the life source of them and their fetuses... eesh.
• Succubi - The Witcher versions share aspects with the scarier versions of sirens/harpies.

• Plague Maidens - we'll just quote their explanation: "Plague Maidens are derived from “Pesta” of Scandinavian folklore. An elderly woman, robed in black, is the embodiment of the pestilence and disease that ravaged Europe when the Black Death rolled into town. From 1346 to 1353, the bubonic plague devastated entire populations and communities. Denmark lost a third of its population, with Norway losing almost half. The legend of Pesta states that she would travel from farm to farm, bringing with her the ill omen of the plague. If she was seen carrying a rake, people believed that only a few of the populace would die, but if she was seen carrying a broom, the settlement would not survive the disease."
• The Wild Hunt - "...are a spectral horde of elves from another dimension. Atop their ghastly steeds, this throng of hunters rides across the night sky, harbingers of war and death. They are heavily armored soldiers that pursue their foes by teleporting between dimensions, striking without warning, and wherever they go a crippling frost precedes them."

Oh and Jacob Grimm gets a nice credit here in this article too, particularly for his volume “Deutsche Mythologie”.

                                     

Please note: In case it's not clear by this point, The Witcher video game is very adult. There is a TON of violence, horror monsters, as well as alcohol and explicit sex. Nevertheless, the game has amazing artwork, innovative use of story and a huge and popular following. (See some amazing, folkloric, and quite horrific cosplay of The Crones - a specifically strongly folkloric aspect at one point of the adventure - HERE.) Even their trailers are intriguing for non-violent RPG video gamers (this one embedded here is PG, possibly PG-13, which might actually be considered misleading, regarding its usual content):

FOREST OF SLEEP
There's also another article on a family-friendly, Slavic folktale-based video game we never got to blog about (the beginnings of a post are still sitting in our drafts folder!), called Forest of Sleep, that should interest folks as well. It is "an experimental, generative storytelling adventure based on Eastern European fairy tales" and the art style and aspects we've seen are delightful. The article/interview is titled: “Weird stuff can happen in folk tales”: Ed Key talks meaning, morals and evil bears in Forest of Sleep", and, just like the interviewer, you can't help but be drawn in by the image of a bear holding a balalaika...

 Here's an excerpt from the interview:

TM: So how are you going about structuring these generative folk tales? Are you looking at folklore through a structuralist lens – taking the approach that they’re built up of common movements and characters?EK: Yes, but there's also the link to modern storytelling here, like episodic cartoons, which all follow this fairly limited set of dramatic structures. Because of the incidents within them, they feel different and surprising, and they have a measure of anticipation.I should really say that thinking in terms of these structures is quite new to me. Nicolai and Hannah [Nicolai Troshinsky and Hannah Nicklin, who are also working on Forest of Sleep] both come from much more of a story-making background. Between us we're getting into this structural idea of narratives. Vladimir Propp is the big figure when you talk about folk tales and structuralism....Where Forest came from originally was, halfway through making Proteus I took a break and started making a game about an expedition – going up a mountain and coming back down again, and how you plan your food and so on. That morphed into a more fixed folk tale story about being in the forest when your parent falls ill, and your group needs to go into the next valley and find medicine. Then I started talking to Nicholai about generative narratives, and he suggested making a game about folk tales. His reason for this was based on the sense that weird stuff can happen in folk tales, and you don't question it so much.Also, there's a thing fairly specific to Russian folk tales, in that you have characters that recur across several stories, like Prince Ivan or Baba Yaga, who are kind of archetypes. The way these characters recur felt like it lent itself to a generative system.

You can find that article HERE.

Forest of Sleep is still in development, with the projected release sometime during 2018. (Possibly, or a little later.)

New Year's Greetings 2017, from Once Upon A Blog & Timeless Tales Magazine

by Marina Volodko

Are you ready? Us neither.

Let's make the best of it and keep believing, mining and sharing the magic.

Let's face 2017 together - up that glass mountain folks!

ox  Happy New Year fairy tale friends and readers.  xo

Russian vintage New Year's postcard. Artist Konstantin Bokarev.
Ded Moroz (Old Man Frost; a kind of Santa) gifts a box with treasures to the good girl named Nastenka.

With wishes for joy, health, hope and creativity, 

from all here at 

Once Upon A Blog

Fairy Tale News Headquarters

&

Timeless Tales Magazine

PS If you're looking for some wonderful seasonal reads, check out Timeless Tales Magazine's new Snow Queen issue HERE, and our friends at Enchanted Conversation have just released their New Year's issue HERE as well. 

Virginia Lee's 'The Frog Bride'

The AFTS Member Ezine Issue 02: The Frog King, or Iron Henry, is out!

Note: If you are a registered member of the Australian Fairy Tale Society (ie your membership fees are paid up to date), and haven't yet received notice via email, along with the link and secret password, please contact the AFTS via Facebook private message HERE or email them directly at austfairytales@gmail.com. They'll hop-to-it and get your goodies to you ASAP.

We've had frog kings, frog princes and frog princesses on the brain for weeks now and in celebration of completing a great compilation of new frog-themed fairy tale works, packaged into the unique fairy tale magazine, we thought we'd share mythic artist, Virgina Lee's lovely, lovely book The Frog Bride, based on the Russian tale The Frog Tsarevna - a story we love and wish we could have explored much more in the last issue.

Here are her notes (from a couple of years ago) on her first children's book, published in 2008:

My first children’s book ‘The Frog Bride’, undertaken 7 years ago, is a shortened version of The Tsarevna Frog, a traditional Russian folk tale retold here by Antonia Barber. It features a slightly camp Prince Ivan with Princess Vassilisa, who has to take her frogskin off and put it on again, rather a lot. In this quest for true love and acceptance, Vassilisa tirelessly tries to impress and capture the hearts of the prince and the royal court by performing her magic and revealing her innate beauty, when all she really desires is to be fully accepted for her less desirable appearances and habits, frogskin and all. 

 I didn't actually write it myself but it was my choice of story. I chose it mainly because I wanted to illustrate a girl taking off a frog skin. I'm always drawn to the physical transformations in stories and what they symbolize. 

Virginia Lee put a lot of love and artistic skill into the illustrations in this book and it could use some more attention (ie. sales) to boost the demand for more gorgeous illustrated books like it.

Enjoy! (And then go grab yourself a copy, if you haven't already.)

Don't you just love the hung-up frog skin in the wardrobe? Such a lovely touch!

Note: the paperback version has this cover below.