Valentina Kurian:
Red Wine Days

PHOTOGRAPHY | PETTER HEGRE

There were tears on her cheeks, but her teeth were gripped, her chin set. She was leaving the safety of the past. But Valia had a dream and knew her journey to Minsk would have to taken alone. She waved one last time to her family, quickened her pace and never looked back.

Minsk is the ancient capital of Belarus, a nation that emerged from the ruins of the former Soviet Union at the same time as Valia was taking her first steps. The city sits astride the rivers linking the Baltic and the Black Sea and has been a trading centre since the first men carved boats from tree trunks. The old quarter on Golden Hill with its stone churches and public squares is oddly in tune with the energetic beat of a new generation, the icons are gold, even the children of Belarus all seem to have golden hair.

Valia knew the moment she arrived in Minsk that leaving home had been the right decision. With her modest savings, she rented a room. She worked as a waitress, a shop assistant, and during every spare moment she went knocking on the doors of model agencies and photographers. She got her first little job, stepping in for a girl who was sick. Then another. Then another. Two years later, at the age of eighteen, Valentina Kurian was crowned Miss Belarus and her dream took wing.

Now, at 24, she is a top model flying to highly paid assignments in London, Paris, New York, Miami, but she remains a country girl at heart with her feet still planted firmly on the ground. She knows a model's career is brief and has used her modelling fees to move to Milan and launch a business in real estate.

Being based in Milan, hooking up with Petter Hegre at the winery at Castello di Bossi in Tuscany was an assignment made in heaven, relaxed, unhurried, the sunlight on the polished stone of the Renaissance palace the perfect backdrop for the golden curves of Miss Belarus. And what better after a long day naked in the sun than a glass of good Chianti, “A day without red wine,” she says, “is a day without meaning.”