Displaced

Research BackgroundThis work contributes to ongoing investigations into how photography can re-represent people and place within herder Mongolian society. It engages with the complexity of colonial history and stereotypes perpetuated by colonialist photographers throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The research challenges these reductive depictions and interrogates how popular culture continues to circulate tropes of exoticism around herder Mongolians. The practice-led objective is to re-interpret these tropes to more accurately reflect contemporary narratives of herder Mongolian identity, place, and history. Research Contribution Displaced interrogates past representations of Mongolian herder society produced by foreign photographers, including my own earlier project A Wandering Life – Journey with Nomads (2001). Through a process of self-reflective recontextualisation, new works were created that question the authority of earlier images and their role in shaping cultural understanding. The exhibition positions the photograph as never fixed, but as a representation that shifts across histories of photographic practice, cultural context, and the gaze of the viewer. In doing so, the work advances debates in photography around subjectivity, authorship, and the instability of documentary truth. Research Significance Displaced was selected as one of three featured international exhibitions at the 2024 Ulaanbaatar Photo Week Photography Festival. The project was accompanied by public talks, media coverage, and university presentations, contributing to dialogue across local and international audiences. Now in its third year, the festival is recognised as a key platform for contemporary photographic practice in Mongolia, featuring both local and international artists including Asher Svidensky (Israel), Tetsuro Shimizu (Japan) and myself. International submissions are peer-reviewed and curated, underscoring the critical recognition of Displaced as a significant contribution to contemporary practice-led photographic research.