mongɣol ulus

Mongolia is just something else. When I landed in Ulaanbaatar I felt that right away. Maybe it is the ever present mood of ‘post-sovietism’, accompanied by ancient central Asian culture and rising western influence. This sociocultural mix is, from my observing standpoint, overwhelming and equally irritating. More than 30 percent of the Mongolians today still live as nomads, but that number is falling rapidly. They push into one of the 3 big cities, Ulaanbaatar being the most overpopulated (almost half of the Mongolian population), with a hope of something they could not find. They live in Ger’s (the traditional Mongolian housing, a round tent) in ghettos around the city, which mostly looks like a forgotten soviet capital, next to young people chasing western idols and money, next to Buddhist monks. But maybe it is something else. I realized that when I left the city for the steppe. It is an overwhelming experience but without the irritating part. The sheer beauty of the endless empty grass hills, the absence of western civilization, the absence of people or tourists overall. It is the beautiful hospitality of the nomads, always with their doors literally open for you to come in. It is their belief that wealth is not counted by money, but by the number of animals you keep. It is their connection to horses, since the great Genghis Khan, that they keep until today. It is the absence of roads and infrastructure. It is their slowly dying beauty of the past. These pictures where shot in 2018 on Fujifilm Acros on a Rolleiflex Camera from 1957.