Minsk Is Gold: A Fruit Feature
Lara Olszowska X Fruit Magazine
Gold can be yellow, orange, beige, cream, white. It can be food, faces, fabrics, facades, Ferraris, reflections and rooftops. Gold slices through the morning sky, it hums through the orange afternoon and it lights up a gloomy night.
Why should gold be associated with wealth or great expense? A humble egg yolk swimming in melted butter can glisten with the same irresistible golden sheen as a pound coin.
The first associations we usually make with gold might be glamorous, expensive, beautiful, garish or powerful. However I doubt that these are the first adjectives that spring to mind when describing the city of Minsk. Fruit magazine inspired me to find the gold amongst the grey and prove that every cloudy city has a golden lining if you look for it.
Above ground, no foreigner would suspect the subterranean treasure that is the soviet metro, with palatial ceilings and marble-looking staircases all weaving the underground world together.
Dusk lighting, better known on Instagram as "golden hour", manages to capture life in its most flattering light. From a selfie to a skyscraper, the afternoon sun paints a city with the same brush and highlights its most precious gems.
Even in the seemingly mundane, the metro offers a glimmer of gold, be it in the clothes of well-groomed women or the signs of tobacco shops and food stalls.
Minsk by night is illuminated by street lamps, metro signs, electronic adverts and car headlights, all shining from white to orange to red. These lights all seem to radiate a golden halo in their surrounding mists.
An orange sunset or yellow sunrise, both fall into the category of gold even though they are opposite times of day and offer different nuances of the colour on its wide spectrum.
