Katya Clover started modeling when she was 23 and quickly became one of the most recognizable faces in nude modeling. Her success as a model is not entirely because of her great body but because of Katya’s unique personality,attitude and beliefs. To understand and appreciate Katya beyond nudity, to see her as a complex, fascinating human being, one needs to know her story. This is her story. In her own words.
In school. Me at the age of 9-10. The picture is probably taken at the start of the new school year.
“In November, 1989 I was born on Russian’s largest island, Sakhalin. To add perspective of it’s size, the island is of the size of Switzerland and Netherland combined. As with many places in Russia, Sakhalin is a place of mixed nationalities: Russian, Korean, Japanese and many others all living happily together as one nation. I studied at English school where most of the subjects was thought in English by American or British teachers which is quite unusual for Russia. I now realize that English gave me a great foundation for an international travel lifestyle that I have now. So many Russians are missing out international opportunities by not learning to speak fluent English. After high school, I continued my studies at Sakhalin State University’s of Oriental Studies program, where I studied Korean language and Korean culture for the next 5 years. I also did a 5 month internship in South Korea. During my university studies I earned money as a accountant working part-time in a Russian-Dutch join-venture oil company. I worked there until I graduated at the age of 23.
Living on Sakhalin, Asia feels so much closer than Moscow which is a 10-hour flight from Sakhalin. My mother was determined to show me the world and we traveled around Asia a couple of times each year. In Europe I visited only Turkey until I was 23 but I was in many Asian countries. This exposure to different countries, cultures and climates at an early age made me realize how diverse and beautiful the world and human races are. I think it is a huge advantage later in life to have grown up in mixed and diverse cultures like Sakhalin as it gives one very different perspective than living in monogamous cultures where there are clear lines separating “us” and “them” , “wrong” and “right” in whatever dimensions there might be.
As a child my mother made me try many activities – music, dancing and acting but it was only dancing that I really fell in love with. I danced semi-professionally for more than 10 years until I was 20, I simply had not enough time to study, work and dance professionally. I don’t dance very often nowadays but I developed another passion – cooking. I love to cook very much and I think I’m pretty good at it. I even consider becoming a chief once I stop modeling.
When I was in my early teens I was very conscious about my body. I was teased by both boys and girls to be too thin and I really envied curved girls, often thinking that being overweight is far better than being thin. I didn’t develop full breasts until I was 15 while other girls had big boobs and round butts a couple of year before me. They were the one getting all the boy’s attention. But when I did catch-up and matured sexually I started to love my body. I realized that my slim body allowed me to practice any kind of sports, to dance, to dress feminine and sexy and not be perceived as vulgar. I also realized I loved being nude, and specially being nude in nature. I fell in love the beauty of a human body and I developed an interest for nudism. I don’t think people should feel ashamed for simply being seen nude. To this day I try to visit a couple of nudist places each year around the world.
When I was about to start searching for my first real job after University, I accidentally discovered internet modeling. My then-boyfriend was a photographer and we used to do lots of nude pictures with me just for us, just for fun. We discovered that we can make easy money by making and selling those pictures of me to one website specializing in amateur nude girls. For a half day of shooting and filming we could get double money than I earned working part time at the oil company. But it was not about money it was so much fun and new experience. We decided to try and produced a few, by today’s standards home-quality photos and videos. We didn’t think about it much but very soon after we’ve started we were contacted by Petter Hegre who wanted us to come and do a 3 days photo and video shooting for him in Barcelona. This was the first time I did a professional shooting with someone other than my boyfriend and I felt I liked the sense of sexual drive of being nude and acting. In those 3 days I tried lots of things for the camera. It was like a bootcamp in erotic video and photo production. It was very intense, we worked all days, experimenting with different set-ups and activities and I understood that I what I liked and what I didn’t. The good thing from all this experience is that I realize what kind of people I want to work professionally and what level of quality and artistic ideas I want to support with my work. I realized that it is very important to have a personal ideology when working in this industry. Call it “moral standards”, “ideology” or “agenda” but you have to have some philosophy that helps you do the right choices. People in this industry will want you to do everything and there is enough money to pay for all that, but I think that as a model my work is my quality stamp, my seal of approval of things that I participate in. If I don’t support something, or don’t like a photographer or his approach, or his website, I will say no. It’s important to have a strong ”why” beside the money and a sense of empowerment, both in modeling but also in any relationships. As the saying goes – a person who stands for nothing will fall for anything. I think this is a huge problem in this industry.
Since that first shooting with Hegre, that I’ve done lots of video production featuring mastrubation and dildo videos, massage, hand-job and foot-job videos, lesbian and interracial, but whatever I’ve done I had my own strong reason why I would do something regardless of the money. I think my open-mindedness but also my strong ideology is what kept me at bay from doing hard-core commercial porn. I just don’t find strong enough reason to do it. On the other hand I’m doing more fashion and catalogue shots, lingerie and art nudes now. I like it because it is a nice counterbalance to erotic photography, where people are very different, work is very different. I have now a very close circle of photographer and production companies that I work with and it is people that I trust and value. Of those, DROYC would be on top of my list – combining art, quality, meaning and revenue.”
The first time Katya worked with DROYC was in Stockholm in October 2017. Katya came for 2-day shooting with DROYC but as it happens the moment Katya landed in Stockholm, the photographer was put on emergency observation in the hospital. We didn’t know that yet but he would stay there for another 2 days never having a chance to see Katya. But we didn’t know it yet, our believe was that he would skip the first day and make it on day 2. We spent day 1 just talking, walking and getting to know each other.
On day two we realized we won’t have a photographer on set and we had no access to his equipment to borrow it, nor could we find another photographer in replacement in such a short notice. What was left to do was for producer to come with his old Nikon D2X and a newer pocket camera Sony MarkIV and do the shooting himself. Because of our bonding with Katya at day 1 we were open to try something new. Our first set was a series of very intimate and personal images done in low light setting. We knew that those images would be far from our high quality DROYC style yet when everyone saw the results they said they were so real so authentic. So we desired to create a separate brand for this type of projects – Up Lose and Personal and we’ve called our set An Intimate Portrait. We’ve worked together with Katya to write a series of letters to accommodate this set, to make it feel even more authentic and real. At the end it became very meaningful and important set.
We’ve met Katya again in Barcelona, less than 2 months after her visit to Stockholm. This time we were determined to make great, artistic pics of Katya. Our rented apartment had huge wall of windows with direct morning sunlight. Our first set was I Love My Skin and was shot in sunrise at the floor of our living room.
