Any portrait is a dialogue between the artist and the model. Creating a portrait of any person the author should be smart enough to gain the confidence of the model, to read his or her mind and understand his or her inner world.

Children, especially those up to six years of age, are most open to the world and sincere in their judgments. Adults are a quite different story, and you need to apply a lot of efforts to overcome their reticence and lack of trust. They are not easy to work with; they treat cooperation with photographers as a way to get the best possible imprint of their appearance and they are hardly interested in any dialogue.

The task to find and strengthen a common ground for interest and trust between the photographer and the model is both exceptionally interesting and complicated. In this respect any photographers need to come into the closest possible contact with persons they take a photo of. For this particular photographic session the author has used make-ups fashionable back in the 1920’s and the 1930’s. One more detail deserves close attention: a tear-drop track on the face of almost each depicted child. In this particular framework, the tears are a symbol of rejection by children of vices characteristic of adult life; the face of a child does not accept any insincerity or falsity as it were.

The works in questions are versatile in their Renaissance contents; they go beyond the limits of national identity, religion or culture. Each human image in Vladimir’s works, no matter an adult or a child, is rather introverted and is a “thing in itself”.