GRAPHĒ: In Mongolia, a Traditional Housing Type Meets the Changing Realities of Its Residents

The country’s seminomadic herders have used tentlike, portable homes for millennia. Photographer Matt Dutile visited a few to see how their modern inhabitants are bringing them into the digital age.

In Mongolia’s Erdenedalai District, herders Nergui Araldiipurev and Tsegmed Davaasamnuu set up camp with more than 800 livestock on a site where they generally live from the end of October until mid-June each year. The couple’s live-in <i>ger</i>, the traditional dwelling used by Mongolian herders, sits near a guest ger and a storage ger and container where they leave some of their belongings when they move from their winter site to the summer pastures. A solar panel allows them to power a TV (served by a satellite dish) and a freezer.

Though the realities of life in Mongolia’s landscapes can be harsh, roughly 40 percent of the country’s people live seminomadically. Even as the country has rapidly urbanized, around one-third of the population still live in gers, tentlike structures that have been central to Mongolian culture for millennia. The design offers housing that’s both reasonably quick to construct and disassemble (important for herders who travel along seasonal routes tending to their livestock) and built to adapt to different weather, which can range from extreme sandstorms during spring to summer hail and winter blizzards.

Last winter, photographer Matt Dutile visited the ger camps of a few herder families across Mongolia, learning how residents use the structures to meet their changing lifestyles and the enduring cycle of the seasons.