I Travelled 40,000 Km Across Siberia To Photograph Its Indigenous People. One Year Later Here’s The Result

Hi! My name is Alexander Khimushin. Nine years ago I packed my backpack to see the world and have been globe-trotting ever since visited 85 countries. While travelling the world, I realized that people are the most amazing part of it.

Three and a half years ago I came up with an idea of the photo project ‘The World In Faces’ that would celebrate beauty and diversity of the world through the portraits of ordinary people. Especially from those remote places, where culture and traditions are still alive. Since then I have taken thousands of portraits all over the world. For almost a year I have been photographing indigenous people of Siberia and Mongolia.

An enormous region, almost a double size of Australia and 30% larger than the United States, Canada or the whole Europe. Siberia is one of the world’s last frontiers of the unknown. No doubt, everyone heard that it is very cold and sparsely populated, but what do we know about people living there?

To find out, I was driving behind an SUV wheel alone, covering around 40,000 km and visited many remote locations across Siberia: from lake Baikal shores to the coast of Japan sea, from endless steppes of Mongolia to the coldest place on Earth – Yakutia. All with only one mission – to capture faces and traditions of various groups of indigenous people living there. While some of the ethnic groups are dominant in their regions, many others are on the edge of disappearance, with a total population as low as only a hundred people left. Until now they remain largely unknown to the outside world.

You have probably seen already the first part of my photo portraits from Siberia. Here is the second. More to come.

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