Located in the heart of Siberia, the village of Oymyakon in Russia is widely considered to be the coldest inhabited place on Earth. A temperature of −90 °F (−67.7 °C) was recorded there back in 1933 — the lowest recorded temperature for any permanently inhabited spot in the world.

New Zealand-based photographer Amos Chapple paid a visit to the 500-person village and captured a series of beautiful photographs showing what life is like inside this extreme village.



Traveling to the village usually involves a two-day drive from Yakutsk, a capital city of 300,000 people that has average winter temperatures of −30 °F (−34 °C), making it the coldest major city in the world.

Residents of Oymyakon deal with special challenges that most of the world can’t relate with: there’s very little indoor plumbing due to the frozen terrain, motor vehicles left outside heated garages must be continually running lest they go into deep freeze, and meat is the main food due to the area’s inability to grow crops.

Chapple says that one of the main challenges of shooting this project — aside from enduring in the fierce coldness — was operating his camera. Things were so cold that his lens’ focus and zoom rings would sometimes get frozen in place.

You can find more of Chapple’s work over on his website.

Update: Not all the photographs above were captured in the village of Oymyakon. Some of them were shot in Yakutsk, the coldest major city on Earth.

Image credit: Photographs by Amos Chapple and used with permission