Capital constructs

Javier Arcenillas's seductive photographs of the Kazakhstan capital won 2nd place in Architecture and Design at the 2022 Sony World Photography Awards

- Peter Dench

Javier Arcenillas is a documentary photographer and teacher of Documentary Photography, Landscape and Architecture at the International School PICA in Madrid. He is also a photographer for the City Council of Alcobendas, a city closely related to photography where he’s photographed its evolution and urbanism over many years. ‘Thanks to this I have the opportunity to carry out professional projects dedicated to architecture and also to the territory or the environment, and at the same time as being the editor of many projects by students who work on this type of photography. That's why I can allow myself to play photographically with essays where architecture acquires a narrative and aesthetic sense within the context of a project,’ explains Javier.

Nur-Sultan, previously known as Akmola then Astana, is the capital city of Kazakhstan, a landlocked country with a navy on the Caspian Sea and the second largest land border in the world (with Russia). The city changed its name in March 2019 in honour of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, after a unanimous vote in Kazakhstan’s parliament. ‘Nur-Sultan was a discovery that allowed me to open a new series on architecture under the concept of creative urbanism,’ Javier says. ‘I started it as a visual exercise for my architecture students, where the main idea was the visual confrontation in a city separated by two concepts: the classic Soviet model and the new futuristic development spreading through it.’