Dina Belenko
Dina Belenko is a still life photographer whose work centers on transforming ordinary objects into carefully constructed visual narratives. Rather than documenting reality, she builds it, crafting scenes through deliberate manipulation, experimentation, and play. She creates her own props, working with materials such as plaster, paper, epoxy resin, and silicone, often breaking, burning, gluing, or suspending objects until they begin to feel alive. For Belenko, a glue gun is as essential as a camera, and still life photography functions as a language that allows her to slow down and think through form, symbolism, and humor simultaneously.
She grew up in a family without professional artists, but one where creativity was treated as a natural part of daily life. Everyone had hobbies, and exploration was encouraged without pressure to excel or monetize. This environment taught her that making could exist purely for enjoyment, a lesson that remains central to her practice. Curiosity, hands-on experimentation, and freedom from perfectionism continue to guide how she approaches both photography and teaching.
Belenko holds a Master’s degree in Publishing and Editing, initially intending to work as a book publisher. That education proved unexpectedly valuable to her photography, shaping both her technical understanding of image processing and her conceptual grounding in literature, aesthetics, and cultural studies. Photography began as a hobby in high school, where she experimented widely across genres. Over time, she became increasingly drawn to planning, sketching, and controlling every element within the frame. This shift revealed her deeper interest in storytelling rather than documentation and ultimately led her to still life photography as a profession.
Still life remains a constant source of experimentation for her. She moves fluidly between subgenres such as food and product photography, incorporates techniques like light painting and long exposures, and frequently builds handmade props from clay, cardboard, fabric, or resin. Even photographing altered prints, such as dissolving cyanotypes, becomes part of her still life vocabulary. This openness allows her to merge craft, design, and photography into a practice that remains playful and continually evolving.
Her creative process is intentionally light on rigid structure. Over-preparation tends to stall her momentum, so she relies instead on simple rituals centered on drawing and writing by hand. Notebooks, pens, and doodles form the foundation of her thinking, allowing ideas to accumulate gradually. Inspiration comes less from sudden moments than from impressions stored over time, visual trinkets collected mentally and revisited later. A recent work, Dew Spirits, emerged from memories of melting ice and the sensory shift of early spring, reconstructed through UV epoxy to evoke the physical qualities of ice she could no longer encounter in her current climate.
Belenko does not believe in the blank canvas. She maintains extensive collections of sketches, notes, and half-formed ideas, ensuring there is always a point of entry into the work. Creative blocks are approached pragmatically, either by narrowing the scope of a problem or recognizing fatigue and stepping away. Small, tactile tasks often serve as warm-ups, allowing ideas to surface without force.
Much of her work explores the emotional resonance of objects and how they absorb time, memory, and human presence. Influenced by fairy tales and myth, she treats everyday items as artifacts with symbolic weight, broken cups and paper boats functioning as quiet repositories of lived experience. Her project Deconstructed Vanitas revisits the historical still life genre through a contemporary lens, reassembling the skull motif with eclectic, brightly lit trinkets that balance humor with reflection on impermanence.
Personal history also enters her work directly. After being forced to relocate to the United States due to war, Belenko created projects that paired unfamiliar natural elements from her new environment with artificial objects carried from home. These combinations reflect the fragile process of rebuilding identity and belonging. Other series reclaim architectural forms from her past, such as Soviet-era apartment blocks, reframing them as spaces of community and memory rather than anonymity.
For Belenko, success lies in sustained curiosity. She values play, excess, and experimentation over efficiency or optimization, encouraging artists to make room for ideas that may never become products. Through still life, she continues to explore how simple objects can carry complex stories, reminding viewers to pause.
