Eastern

Mongolia, spring 2003

I went to Mongolia in the spring of 2003 as a travel agency photographer. My mission, "to photograph the steppes," implied that I had to give an overlook of the nomadic way of life and display the landscape‚s diversity. I was supposed to photograph tourist hotels in Ulan-bator and to give an appealing vision of the country. A driver, a translator and a vehicle were at my disposal for two weeks. For the Mongolian people, my pictures were ment to illustrate this classical tour from UB to the Gobi desert, intended to respond to the exotic needs of Western tourists. For me, however, to truely see Mongolia, I had to get away from the overexposed clichés about the country. This need for tangable reality found its expression both through the exploration of small towns and petrol stations and through encounters with local people. "Eastern" is drawn from my Mongolian „road movie." It is a way of capturing through photography the notion of inhabited spaces. It also emphasizes traces of the global integration of this country.