I like how this book is written, the book is way better then the movie. You can't help empathizing the main character. Needing to be wanted in a very general way, not being in peace with oneself, surviving when all the world is hostile towards you and finally attempting to create the perfect scent to get people's affection... I think that the whole story is a huge metaphor, but you can see a real person's story behind it, I think even a story of an artist...

"10 women" is my "table book". For this book, Peter Lindbergh photographed supermodels of 90th, but in much more deep and interesting style then other photographers normally did. In this book, the models are real, imperfect, emotional... You can see their character, their stories, personalities. Discovering their flaws and vulnerabilities you suddenly realize, that they are more beautiful then ever.

3.

\mathcal{S} = {T \over 2}\int \mathrm{d}^2 \sigma \sqrt{-h} h^{ab} g_{\mu \nu} (X) \partial_a X^\mu (\sigma) \partial_b X^\nu(\sigma)

Once upon a time I wanted to became a theoretical physicist. And, may I say, it was the biggest exercise for my fantasy ever :). In a middle school I tried to imagine a four-dimensional cube, or an electron being a particle and a wave at the same time; in higher school - the fact that we live in a 26-dimensional space that is twisted in tubes. With time my fantasy shifted to other topics, and I do not regret abandoning physics, but I do think that there are no stories more poetic then the story of a birth of a supernova star...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA_xQtDC6S0For me it is a metaphor about a creative journey and a return from it to the everyday happy life.

Classic art for me is a really deep source of inspiration. Even though many people find it old-fashioned or boring when compared to surrealism or cubism, I find it not just beautiful but also instructive, especially for photography cause it shares with it its realistic technics. Just one fun little thing: here I tried to mimic Venus's face: http://alionakuznetsova.com/tests/selected-tests#!page6 .

Two years ago I had a mental disease. I spent 1.5 month in a clinic and then 1.5 years overcoming the consequences of my crisis. The whole process - delusions and hallucinations, time in the clinic and interactions will other patients, long depression and slow recovery - made me a different person. It also gave me a unique experience and a lot of inspiration.

I always adored his great paintings, which appeared to be genial and insane at the same time, but I found a new understanding of them when I read Van Gogh's biography. It is a story about dedication and following your view under the harshest circumstances. I wonder, how much one have to love what he is doing in order to ignore literally everything else in one's life, including one's mental illness.

This is an album and also a movie. I love depressive music because it kind of returns me to the basis from which I can find a way for my creativity. The story about formation of a person and creating self-restrictions, about living with these restrictions and overcoming them. Very deep lyrics and fantastic music.

His books are about life and love and death, about war and struggle, lost motherland and broken people, but mostly they are about remaining a human no matter where life will bring you.

Paris is a very special city for me in many senses. It was the first city I visited in Europe. Here I participated in an international conference for the first time. Here I did my first creative collaboration with a fashion designer. Far before visiting this city for the first time, I read about it in a great novel by Ernest Hemingway. In this book the author tells about a life of a young writer in Paris. This book was a powerful inspiration! One of my favourite quotations from the book is:

"- It is necessary to either buy clothes or paintings, - she said. - That's all. No one except the very wealthy, can not afford both. Do not attach much importance to clothes, and most importantly, do not chase fashion, buy durable and comfortable things, and then you have money left over for the paintings. "