Ice Fishers

For a recent project, Aleksey Kondratyev captured the ice fishers of his native Kazakhstan sheltering themselves from the brutal cold. He wrote about the project for LensCulture.

Many of these fishermen venture onto the ice, braving temperatures that often reach -40 degrees celsius. After Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, north-central Kazakhstan is the second-coldest populated region in the world. While they fish, the fishermen protect themselves from the harsh weather with salvaged pieces of plastic, patched together from discarded packaging or rice bags that you can find outside markets selling western, Chinese and Russian goods.

I was interested in examining the aesthetic forms of these improvised protective coverings and the way in which they function as inadvertent sculptures.

• Aleksey Kondratyev
• photography