Snejana Onopka for TOP10 magazine №31 "Ode to a model"

Styling & photography Anna Zosimova. Make-up Tatyana Kharkova. Hair Andrey Yablonsky. Styling assistance Kristina Klyushnik.

Model Snejana Onopka.

ODE TO A MODEL

I have followed you, model,

in magazine ads through all seasons,

from dead leaf on the sod

to red leaf on the breeze,

from your lily-white armpit

to the tip of your butterfly eyelash,

charming and pitiful,

silly and stylish.

Or in kneesocks and tartan

standing there like some fabulous symbol,

parted feet pointed outward –

pedal form of akimbo.

On lawn, in a parody

of Spring and its cherry-tree,

near a vase and parapet,

virgin practising archery.

Ballerina, black-masked,

near a parapet of alabaster.

«Can one» - somebody asked

-rhyme «star» and «disaster»?»

Can one picture a blackbird

as the negative of a small firebird?

Can a record, run backward,

turn «repaid» into «diaper»?

Can one marry a model?

Kill your past, make you real, raise a family,

by removing you bodily

from back numbers of Sham?

Vladimir Nabokov

1955/10/08