Porodina’s early years were impacted by the brutalist buildings in Moscow and her mother who introduced art to Porodina’s mind. Stored in her subconscious, art is what became the extension and expression of "her self", implying that every single one of her photographs is a self-portrait. Art became—and still is—an inevitable, and inseparable, part of her. Porodina’s academic upbringing in post-Soviet Russia and her interest in emotional behavior led her to study clinical psychology.This background and her striving towards greater understanding of herself, her environment and others, informed her move to photography. It became a frame by which she is not limited—photography is just another medium to her that allows to stimulate the mind by showing, rather than by speaking, since the subconscious is not verbal either.