My earliest memory of photography is when I was in sixth grade. My uncle, an artist, used to take our photos in black and white, which he would then develop and give to us.
I moved to the capital, Ulaanbaatar, after finishing high school to study at the Art College, the only school that was teaching photography at that time.
I always wanted to do something different. All my family worked in finance but somehow I wasn’t interested in that. I liked cameras and photos.
The assignment that left the biggest mark on me was in the winter of 2010, which was very cold including heavy snow. That was extremely hard on both herdsmen and cattle in rural areas. We call it “zud”, a disaster. That winter more than 10 million livestock, or a quarter of the total, died in Mongolia - a catastrophic number.
I saw people’s suffering when they were dealing with their livestock’s dead bodies. Some herdsmen lost all their livestock and had to move to the city, changing their way of life completely.
The assignments that excite me most are those about human life. Everybody is different in some way, and so is the situation they live in and cope with. So the range of stories to tell is enormous.
The people I most respect the most - apart from my parents - are the photographers Sebastião Salgado and Thomas Dworzak.
There are huge possibilities now to showcase your photos and reach a massive audience quickly. That’s enabled by the speed with which photos get published, combined with people’s wide access to the media.
The biggest lesson I’ve learnt is always to carry a camera - no matter what kind.
