Full Circle Photography Gallery presents Ice Fishers, a solo exhibition by Aleksey Kondratyev whose photographs offer an intimate look at fishermen on the frozen Ishim River in Kazakhstan.
Captured between 2016 to 2018, the collection of work features broad spans of white landscapes with obscured figures huddled within various salvaged pieces of plastic. Set against the backdrop of the Ishim River in northern-central Kazakhstan, the second-coldest populated region in the world, these fishermen brave temperatures that often reach below -40 degrees Fahrenheit. The river, further along, flows through the country’s capital, Astana, a high-rise, futuristic city that was built virtually from scratch in the 1990s after gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Astana was built during an awkward transition to a modern and centralized power system that coincided with the exploitation of Kazakhstan’s oil reserves. The capital was intended as an emblem of post-Soviet modernity and a hallmark of the country’s entrance into the global economy.
What we witness, however, is the stark contrast between the capital and the people overshadowed and left behind by these booms. The materials used by the fishermen are patched together from discarded packaging or rice bags found outside markets selling Western, Chinese, and Russian goods. The improvised bags act as inadvertent sculptures set against a field of ice and snow. This act of dexterous ingenuity shown by the fishermen in the creation of these protective enclosures illustrates a remaking and adaptation of the material flow of global capitalism.
Ice Fishers brings together these different structures and ways of life, and raises the question: how can we exist post-capitalism and incorporate and/or learn from cultures who have yet to be affected by this global structure?
