Aleksey & Marina is an artistic partnership between Aleksey Kozlov, the photographer, and Marina Khlebnikova, an artist who uses a unique style of painting to brush and etch directly on to the negatives of his shots. This “photopainting” technique creates a bizarre, almost surrealistic image, somewhere between a photograph and a watercolor. They also collaborates on other projects, like more traditional art nudes and erotic calendars. They started working together in 1998 and today both are members of the international Federation of Artists (IFA) and the Artists Union of Russia.
Nude drawing gallery from Aleksey & Marina
The creative project Photopainting is an integral part of the Russian and Russian artistic photography of the late 90s – early 2000s. Apart from the authors’ vivid photographic handwriting and fantastic, daring images, the photographs of this project have one thing in common – a rare technique of negative film processing developed by the authors and called “Photopainting” – painting on negative, which literally broke the traditional perception of the possibilities and borders of analogue photography. Photopainting is pure art, never aimed at any practical gain, devoid of ambitious ambitions and expressing only the freedom, feelings and creative impulse of the authors. The project was unselfishly supported and participated by the best models of St. Petersburg, dancers, fashion designers, body artists, businessmen, galleries, designers and photographers.