Dukha Reindeer-Herding Families: Pascal Mannaerts’s Mongolia Photographs

A reindeer steps into the foreground while someone behind it smiles at the camera. It is a lovely, ordinary moment in an unfamiliar setting, and a better starting point than a claim that an entire community lives outside the modern world.

Pascal Mannaerts’s photographs introduce Dukha reindeer-herding families in northern Mongolia, often called Tsaatan in Mongolian. The original account described a visit in June 2014. Its portraits and family details belong to that encounter, rather than a live census or a description of every family today.

A life organised around animals and seasons

Reindeer herding helps shape movement between camps and the work of daily life. Animals need appropriate grazing and care; people bring the skills and knowledge that make those movements possible. It is a relationship involving decisions, experience and labour, not just an attractive scene for a visitor.

The photographs show several kinds of moments: people among the herd, domestic work, children playing and the landscape around camp. Taken together, they give a fuller picture than the single image of a person standing beside a reindeer.

Mannaerts’s photography website is the source for his wider work. Our introduction to his travel portraits offers another way into the portfolio.

The tent is not a generic yurt

The conical dwelling used by Dukha herders is commonly described in Mongolian as an ortz. Its shape and construction differ from the round, framed ger often associated with Mongolia. Using the correct distinction helps readers notice the actual design instead of treating all mobile homes as interchangeable.

A British Museum-hosted research programme documents knowledge connected with these dwellings, including materials, making skills and language. That is a useful reminder that a tent is an expression of expertise as well as a place to sleep.

What an old gallery cannot tell us

A photographic visit records a particular set of households, activities and choices. It cannot provide a permanent population count or a rule about how every family uses its herd. Here, the most informative details are the tasks actually shown and the people identified in the captions. Read them as observations from Mannaerts's June 2014 encounter, with room for differences between households and for changes since the photographs were made.

Nor should the people pictured be reduced to evidence of a vanishing, untouched world. Their lives include change, preferences and decisions about how to engage with visitors.

Visit through a relationship, not a photo checklist

If considering a journey to the region, ask how a guide works with host families, how payment reaches them and what kind of visit they want to offer. Confirm the season and realistic travel arrangements rather than expecting a camp to remain in the position of an old photograph.

Ask before photographing people or entering a dwelling, and let hosts decide whether contact with their animals is appropriate. The most valuable part of a visit may be an explanation you listen to, rather than a picture you bring home.

The festival comparison offers other ways to plan around a community event while respecting its particular setting and traditions.

A visit in June 2014

Mannaerts’s account described travelling on horseback from Tsagaan Nuur toward a summer camp in the Ulaan taiga. That dated visit is the frame for the photographs. A family encountered during one season should not be made to represent an unchanging way of life for every Dukha household. The word Tsaatan is commonly used in Mongolian, while Dukha is an important name for the community itself.

The earlier text described movement between seasonal camps and groups of households cooperating around the herd. These are useful observations when kept tied to the account. Exact household totals, population claims and annual movements should not be recycled as present-day statistics without updated evidence.

Names make the portraits more than scenery

The captions identify Narahuu and Bolorma with their children Ulziitsetseg, Tuvshinbayar, Ulziichimig and Ulziisaihan. Bayrsaïhan, Chagtan, Baagii and Nuuru are also named in the camp. Follow those identifications as you move between the portraits and domestic scenes. A person seen beside the herd may appear elsewhere taking part in a different activity, giving the sequence connections that disappear when every subject is described simply as a nomad.

A posed family portrait, a child waking a sibling and an adult preparing food show different kinds of moments. None needs to be presented as evidence that the subjects live outside the modern world. The selfie in the collection is a particularly clear reminder that the encounter involved contemporary people participating in a shared photographic moment.

Work follows the animals

The sequence includes reindeer returning toward camp, people bringing them in for milking and Bolorma heating milk to make cheese. These details connect the herd to everyday work rather than reducing it to a picturesque backdrop. The account described milk tea, yoghurt and cheese as part of the visit’s food context.

The milking and food-preparation scenes give this series a clear dairy context, alongside the account's descriptions of reindeer used for transport. Keep those observations connected to the activities and people depicted. Questions about meat, herd management or differences between families need community-specific evidence beyond these photographs. The visible work is already a substantial subject: bringing animals in, handling milk and preparing food links the wider landscape with the tasks that fill a day at camp.

The camp is a working home

The conical tents shown should not simply be called the same thing as every Mongolian ger or compared with an unrelated Indigenous home as if the cultures were interchangeable. The arrangement of shelters, firewood and household work is part of how the camp functions. A summer elevation quoted in the earlier visit is a detail about that camp, not a permanent settlement address.

For a reader, the most useful way to approach these images is to follow what people are doing. Preparing a drink, cutting wood or tending an animal communicates more than a romantic declaration that life is untouched or timeless. The setting is remote from many readers’ lives, but its inhabitants are not props in an adventure story.

Belief and tourism need respectful limits

Mannaerts’s original account included descriptions of shamanic beliefs and clothing. Those are his observations; they do not establish that everyone shares identical beliefs or that one community preserves the oldest form of a religion. The photographs cannot settle such broad historical questions.

If the collection prompts interest in a visit, the next step is to learn about community-led arrangements and expectations around photography. Permission to be present does not automatically mean permission to photograph every domestic or spiritual activity. The gallery’s value lies in a specific encounter whose names, date and creator remain visible.