“A lot of the men I talked to were older, and have been living in Astana since it was Tselinograd. Most were made to move as part of government-mandated labor resettlement programs with their families to work on fields harvesting grain for the Virgin Lands Campaign,” he continues. Now, living in high rises in the older part of the Astana, they go out on to the river and detach themselves from the rest of the city. Are they isolated from modern, multi-billion-dollar Astana? In Kondratyev’s view, these fishermen are following the heritage of their ancestors. “Kazakhstan was once a nomadic country, and vestiges of that way of life still exist despite the country’s embrace of modernity. These ice fishers improvise and adapt to their environment in ingenious ways, just as their forebears did,” writes the photographer.

Text: Liza Premiyak

Image: Aleksey Kondratyev

Ice Fishers by Aleksey Kondratyvev is published by Loose Joins and available here.