Remember Disney’s Snow White? Or The Little Mermaid? The classic Disney films we all loved as a child have a much darker origin than many know. Snow White’s stepmother for instance, in the original story from 1812 written by the Grimm brothers, wanted to have Snow White murdered so she could eat her lover and lungs. When that didn’t work out the way she wanted she was sentenced to death by dancing in red-hot iron shoes until she died. Or Ariel, everyone’s favorite red-head? In the original, penned by Hans Christian Andersen, Ariel wasn’t as lucky as in the Disney film. After her deal with the sea witch her legs hurt all the time, Prince Eric marries another woman and Ariel throws herself in the ocean where she dissolves into sea foam.
Although the dark parts of the tales were left out of many modern day adaptations, there are still artists that cherish the original fairytale gloom. Photographer Ekaterina Belinskaya is one of them. Her eerie stories look magnificent and perfect, yet always have a hidden layer of darkness in them.
Born in Moscow, Ekaterina Belinskaya currently lives in Los Angeles. Always passionate about science, Ekaterina studied to become an engineer-ecologist. Whilst studying on University she discovered photography and decided to pursue her career in photography. Several years later Ekaterina’s portfolio reads like an epic book of fairy tales: fantastic costumes, perfect make-up, enchanting models and locations that look too dreamy to be true: every photo series tells a story. Both in the free work and in her editorial work Ekaterina works with a team of creatives to shape modern fairy tales, and – fortunately for us – with that dark twist that made the original, classic fairy tales so iconic.
Read more about Ekaterina in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Issue 010 | September 2015
