Life Between the Rushes
Mongolia
Far from the madding crowd
After spending a little time in rural Mongolia you will soon realise that the pace of life in this enchanting place is beautifully slow and serene. Offering up this aspect of the human condition to the viewing public is a very hard thing to do in both photography and film because our media has evolved in such a way that we expect to see drama, action and purpose in our films and printed media. Normal, so-called mundane life is often ignored at the expense of the superlative. One film I recall that brilliantly encapsulates the essence of what I’m talking about is the Korean masterpiece Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter And Spring by Ki-Duk Kim which follows the sublime life of an old monk and his young apprentice as they live through the seasons on a temple floating in the middle of an isolated lake.
Intimate films about quiet lives rarely reach out to large audiences and it is an ever-present dilemma for the documentary maker to compromise this element of story telling for the sake of the wider following. Both ways have equal merit in my opinion, but the unremarkable (to some), more personal approach is often represented considerably less within the world’s media.
With this in mind, today I decided to train my camera on a very simple and unexceptional situation at the home of our adoptive Mongolian family and film a candid conversation for 5 minutes to see if it would offer up a different insight into the life that is lived here ‘in between the rushes’ so to speak.
I have called this clip ‘The Thick Brown Thread’ because the conversation revolves around things pertaining to sewing in a very ordinary but extremely funny way.
To give you a little background on the situation, we were staying with this lovely nomadic family of camel and cashmere goat herders at their remote winter farm (pictured above) in order to document the birth of a new camel. As you will see, the pregnant camel we were waiting on was long overdue and nobody knew why. The ensuing discussion prompts an intriguing story of an unfortunate incident with a goat and a comb…
Here’s the clip.
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TASEARCHMONGOLIA
A Footprint in the Sand
Mongolia
Will they miss me when I'm gone ?
When it comes to places that inspire quiet introspection, the Gobi desert has got to be one of the best spots in the world to sit silently, soak up the majesty of Mother Nature and reflect upon life, the universe and nothing in particular. Living, as I am now within the shadow of giant tidal wave-like sand dunes, it’s hard to ignore the truth that the world, like the dune beside me, is in a continual state of change. Because I travel and photograph people for a living, I am often asked if I am concerned that so much indigenous culture is disappearing from our planet at this time in history. The truth is, I am not. Just as the waves of these spectacular dunes ebb and flow with time, for me, so it is with the journey of everything coexisting on our planet. Civilisations, species, environments – we’re all at the mercy of the forces that propel life. It’s easy to forget that the world was once populated by a magnificent race of giant reptiles whose residency spanned many million times that of our own but whose legacy now to the planet can only be found filed away in the fossil record and indeed within the very grains of sand beneath my feet.
I think that we as humans love to believe that we can stop things from changing. We seem to devote large amounts of time and energy trying to preserve things the way they are. I reckon I’m with the dune on this one.
When we are all long gone from the Earth and she is entertaining new guests at the table of life, I wonder if they will lament the loss of the human species. Probably not. Possibly a little, with the affection that we afford the dinosaurs, but definitely, I expect they’ll be raising a glass to the fantastic resilience of life and its continued prosperity.
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Interested in more stories from Mongolia? Try HERE
TASEARCHMONGOLIA
