KAZAKHSTAN
Following parts of the ancient Silk Road, a journey of hitchhiking across Kazakhstan, from the Caspian Sea in the west, through vast stretches of steppe and desert, to the modern metropolis of Almaty. Photographed on 35mm film using a Voigtländer Bessa R4M loaded with Kodak Portra 400.
Beyneu train station
Trains leaving Beyneu and heading east. The landscape is open vast stretches of desert and barren steppe. Beneath this empty land lie deposits of oil and gas.
The Aralsulfat salt flats near Zhaksykylysh
Kazakh workers sitting in the shade of a truck near the village of Zhaksykylysh, a remote industrial settlement in western Kazakhstan. Resting between shifts at the salt mines of Aralsulfat, the workers operate heavy machinery mining salt from the dried seabed.
Aralsk
Along the roadside in Aralsk, women sell melons brought in from other parts of Kazakhstan. The region has been left unsuitable for agriculture because of the retreat of the Aral Sea, fresh produce often has to travel long distances to reach this part of Kazakhstan
Once a fishing town on the shores of the Aral Sea, Aralsk now sits surrounded by an arid, desert-like landscape.
Truck drivers of Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan's vast open steppe and desert means that cities are often separated by hundreds of kilometres. Truck drivers keep the country connected, transporting goods across long stretches of empty roads, desert and grassland.