Shaman – Mongolia Siberian border

Series of portraits of a Tsaatan friend,
A meeting from ten years ago.

It witnessed a time spent fleeing the wishes of Soviet sedentarization, preserving an age-old culture and ancestral customs, so as not to disappear. She will invite me to stay three days, we will give the usual gifts: Stalinist medals, relics from another time, cigarettes, canned fruit, Russian vodka …

A selection of photos from this report was presented during the “Nomads” exhibition.

The Tsaatan live in the north of Mongolia on the border of Siberia. The current population of Tsaatan is around eighty families, half of whom still live in the taiga (the other half have adopted the nomadic Mongolian lifestyle and the other half have settled down). “Tsaa” means “reindeer” in idiom tsaatan: Tsaatans are “those who live with reindeer”, themselves prefer to be called “people of the Taiga”.