Recently, photographer Amos Chapple, from New Zealand, decided to take a little trip to capture images of everyday life in this village near Yakutsk, the coldest city on Earth, where 300,000 people live at average temperatures of -34°C. Chapple says that one of the main challenges of his project – in addition to enduring the fierce cold weather- was to operate his camera. The temperatures were so low that the optical zoom of his lens would sometimes freeze in place.
Oymyakon residents deal with special challenges that most people elsewhere in the world cannot even imagine: there is very little running water due to frozen ground, cars are left in heated garages and must be continuously left on so they won’t freeze, meat is their main staple food due to the the inability to grow anything in their frozen soil. The village is supplied by a single, small store that offers everything the population needs, while a coal heating plant keeps the inhabitants at an acceptable temperature. It’s difficult to grasp how people even survive in such a hostile environment where there is no sun light, but the photographs sure turned out beautiful.
