The Myth of AnaLesnaya

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It all began in 2019 with a photograph taken in Novosibirsk.
I was walking through the forest with my young daughter when I decided to photograph my handmade earrings. Could I have known that this moment — this single image — would become a turning point in my story?

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Of course not.

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I spent countless nights teaching myself Adobe Photoshop, returning again and again to that photograph, trying to shape something meaningful from it. It was during that time that the name of my Instagram page was born — AnaLesnaya.

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Later, I began photographing people and met a woman with beautifully long, naturally curly hair. Her hair became the inspiration for the next — and final — stage of the logo’s creation.

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Although the logo grew out of my own photograph, I never perceived it as a self-portrait. While creating it, my intention was to express a collective image of the feminine soul.

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In my imagination, fairy tales appeared, as if they had stepped out of Jon Bauer’s illustrations — young women with long hair wandering through the forest. I could see the wind moving through the pine trees, twisting their strands as though quietly mixing a spell.

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And so AnaLesnaya became not the image of one woman, but a magical embodiment of all women — as seen through my soul.