National Geographic

|EXPLORE|CITIESNearly 300,000 peoplelive in Yakutsk, reputed tobe the world’s coldest city.Its port on Russia’s LenaRiver is a source of the fishthat fill markets—and stayrigidly cold in winter.``````brief summer can exceed 85°F, wintertemperatures regularly fall to -40°F, hesays—and the lowest ever recorded wasa staggering -83°F.Among the extreme cities, this onewas especially challenging to capture,Iuncker says: “Everything is ice, fog, andshadows” that obscure vistas and land-marks. When he braved the cold to stepoutside, frost instantly coated his camera,and its mechanisms froze to a halt.Iuncker says his photo project exploresthis question: Do extreme environmentstrigger extreme emotions or behaviorsin inhabitants? Not in Yakutsk, it seems.It’s often too cold to break ground forconstruction or graves, too cold for air-planes to fly or crops to grow. Marketslike the one seen here may not have freshvegetables, Iuncker says—but they havevery fresh, very cold fish “arranged likebunches of flowers.”``````Earth’s highest city, its most crowdedcity, its most polluted city: Geneva-basedphotographer Steeve Iuncker soughtthem out. For a project Iuncker callsVilles Extrêmes—Extreme Cities—hewanted to photograph ordinary life incities that set extraordinary records orembody stark superlatives. That’s howhe ended up in Yakutsk, Russia.The capital city of the vast (1.2 millionsquare miles) Siberian region known asthe Sakha Republic, Yakutsk is widelyidentified as the world’s coldest city.“No other place on Earth experienc-es this temperature extreme,” Iunckersays. Though temperatures during the``````T H E C O L D E S T C I T YIN THE WORLD``````By Patricia Edmonds``````PHOTO: STEEVE IUNCKER, AGENCE VU/REDUX PICTURES