Capitalizer
Thomas Brasey

Until 1994, Akmola (literally, the “White Tomb”) was just an unassuming provincial city in Kazakhstan. That was before; now renamed Astana, it is a capital endowed with megalomaniacal architecture, a city of fantasy imagined and built from scratch by order of president Nazarbayev. Like a Las Vegas on the steppes, Astana is nothing less than an urban planning disaster. The artificiality of the design seems meant to sweep away all traces of a distant past: for the city must henceforth play the role of a great capital. And yet time seems suspended there, just like its inhabitants…

Year of production: 2012