The work of Dmitri Belyi screams vintage glamour. Clothing and the model fuse Belyi’s enchantment with a society that appreciates the value of looking beautiful and advocates for a revival of an elegant femininity mostly lacking in our mainstream culture.
Belyi’s expertise is what saves his work from quaint anachronism. In Bettina, for example, a model is dressed like a fashionable private-eye, her vintage outfit juxtaposed by her facial piercings. Dressed in black and white, she holds a magnifying glass up to the lens, illuminating her right eye with prestige while masking her left eye with a darker, mysterious tint. The light dances around her face, expressing the model’s beautiful yet defiant attitude. By meshing his use of light on the models with a vintage clothing backdrop, Belyi’s photography feels both edgy and graceful.
Another aspect of Belyi’s photography that leaks off the image is the feeling of precision. His average photo shoot lasts six hours and Belyi’s meticulousness is rewarding. Bridget, for example, must have required patience, as the dark-brown eyes of the model combine with icy gaze of the husky. The pair of eyes pierces the onlooker with bold simplicity, spouted from Belyi’s philosophy that without specific detail, the potential of an image is destroyed.
Portfolio: www.flickr.com/photos/bydmitri
Website: www.dmitribelyi.com
This article appears in April 2011.
