Dina Bova (
Hebrew: דינה בווה;
Russian: Дина Бова; born June 16, 1977) is an Israeli photographer, digital artist and artificial intelligence researcher, notable for her
surrealist photography.
She has won the grand prize at the
Nikon Photo Contest for 2012–2013 with the photograph Elegy of Autumn.[1]
Art career
Dina Bova specializes in conceptual surrealist photography. She began her photographic career with documentary photography, but quickly moved to surrealism.[2] She began participating in international contests in July 2008,[3] and won second place in Nikon's 2008–2009 photo context with Fishing in Hitchcock's Style, in the My Planet category.[4] Her altered photo of
Manarola, Italy, was a finalist in The Smithsonian's 11th annual photo contest (2013), in the altered images category.[5] The photo, named Babylon, was inspired by
Pieter Bruegel's The Tower of Babel[6]
In the same year, her photo Elegy of Autumn won the grand prize at the Nikon Photo Contest, selected from over 100,000 entries – the first Israeli entry to have won.[7][1] She describes her style as Truthful Fiction, as, according to her, "fiction may not reflect the reality as we know it, yet conveys a deep, accurate and true message".[8] Bova lists
Jan Saudek as a major inspiration.[9]
Bova has designed album covers for a number of Israeli and Jewish musicians, including
Orphaned Land and its former member
Yossi Sassi,[10]RebbeSoul and others.[citation needed] The Orphaned Land album cover, for the album The Road to Or Shalem, was also inspired by another Bruegel painting, The Blind Leading the Blind, and combined a photograph of the musicians with the skyline of
Melbourne, Australia.[10] She has also had artistic collaborations with
Maria Kong,
Yisrael Aharoni and German Kabirski.
Bova has exhibited her works in the
Salon d'Automne, and has had numerous solo exhibitions, including The Truth in the Lie, Distillation of a Fantastic Reality (in
Rishon Lezion), and others.[11] She was a major contributor to the Beauty Saves the World (BSW) photography project started by her husband, which focused on
fine-art photography and exhibited in multiple countries.[12] She has taught at
Galitz School of Photography in
Ramat Gan, Israel, and writes guides and tutorials for various photography magazines, such as 1x and Practical Photoshop.[citation needed] She has given numerous talks, including in the Annual Israeli Photography Convention in 2014.[13] She has published a book with her photographs in 2013, called Truthful Fiction, with a second edition released in 2014.
^"דינה בווה, תערוכת צילום סוריאליסטי" [Dina Bova, Surrealistic Photo Exhibition] (in Hebrew). Weil Center. April 24, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2022.