Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Yelena Yemchuk immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was eleven. She became interested in photography when her father gave her a 35 mm Minolta camera for her fourteenth birthday and went on to study at Parsons in New York and Recognised for her surrealistic whimsy and dark romanticism, Yemchuk has exhibited paintings and photographs in museums and galleries worldwide. She has shot for the New Yorker, Another Magazine, ID, Dazed & Confused, and Italian, British and Japanese Vogue