The Penn Pals

Came home from my little burlesque trip to Rome at 3 am this morning. Of course I'll tell you all about that soon. But until I'm done writing those posts, here is something else...

Recently I got the honor of being put on the cover of a book - a book that doesn't really exist... This book, the story behind it, and the web site made to promote it, is a project created by the very inventive photographer, retoucher and web designer Pelle Piano, and is called The Penn Pals. The made up story behind this "book" is that the photos of the fictive photographer Sven Boqvist were thought to have been lost in a fire. Now, fifty years later, they have been found though. And this book is a compilation of these "lost" images, together with the stories about the persons portrayed - whom Sven Boqvist met during his travels in the 50s.

One of the characters Sven met and photographed in New York, in 1955, was the Russian born ballerina Tatiana Baronova, sister of Irina Barolova. Irina was a real ballet dancer, but in this project I got to portray her made up sister. And here are the photos Sven (or in real life - Pelle Piano) took of me/Tatiana...

All photos were taken in Mr Piano's home studio, against a blue screen, and then photoshopped into lovely surroundings by this talented man. I love shooting with him! Getting to see the final pictures, with the plain blue background magically replaced by amazing backgrounds is always so exciting!

Of course I'm not the only person portrayed as a fictional character in this "book". Go ahead and follow this link to The Penn Pals, and discover the rest. If I didn't know it was all a scam, I would believe this story was true. It's very well made!

All photos taken by Pelle Piano.