For three years, I have led month-long inter-professional field camps, primarily in medical education, in the Darkhad Valley, one of Mongolia’s most remote places. Living and working among the Darkhad people and seeing patients in the rural bag clinics, I have felt a growing closeness to the traditional pastoralism that defines the region.

I hope this work will not be read as a eulogy for pastoralism. Rather, I want the photographs to prompt a conversation about the pressures Mongolia faces as a young democracy. This central tension, between the forces of modern Mongolia and its past, appears in the streetwear and hoodies on children riding reindeer, a child’s hair washed in the shadow of a Russian UAZ, and grandparents in deels beside their grandson in sneakers on the artificial turf where Naadam games are now held.