Ice Fishing in World’s Second Coldest City

Photos taken by Kyrgyzstan photographer Aleksey Kondratyev show ice fishermen doing ice fishing through an opening in the frozen Ishim River, which is located in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, the world’s second coldest city.

Hunched in a plastic bag in order to keep warm, each of these ice fishermen waited patiently for a bite amidst the piercing gust. Known as the second-coldest capital city in the world after Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, Astana could endure a temperature as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter.

Kondratyev took an artistic approach to his images in which the fishermen were all seeminly absorbed in their own meditative state. "I was interested in the idea of isolating oneself from the world, like these guys do with their plastic bags," Kondratyev said.