Followers of Genghis Khan: Nomadic Mongolians of China

Followers of Genghis Khan: Nomadic Mongolians of China is a major photobook by Mongolian photographer A Yin, documenting the lives of nomadic communities in Inner Mongolia during a period of rapid social and environmental change.

Between 1998 and 2008, A Yin lived and worked among herding families in East Ujimqin Banner, photographing their daily lives, seasonal movements, work, homes and relationship with the grassland. Over the course of the project, he produced approximately 200,000 negatives and assembled an extensive written record of Mongolian customs and nomadic culture.

Published in Beijing in 2009, the book brings together around 100 black-and-white photographs selected from this long-term body of work, accompanied by contextual writing on nomadic culture. Rather than presenting life on the steppe as folklore or spectacle, A Yin records the people he encountered with closeness and dignity, creating a visual document of a way of life increasingly affected by settlement, industrialisation and environmental pressure.

The hardcover first edition contains text in Chinese and English and is illustrated throughout with finely printed black-and-white gravure photographs. It remains an important early publication in A Yin’s sustained photographic study of Mongolian identity, memory and cultural transformation.