It was in 1996 that the young poet Tugsjargal Munkherdene heard American hip-hop for the first time.

Four years earlier, the Soviet-aligned Mongolian government had fallen, opening the country to a new wave of cultural imports. The relaxation of state censorship heralded a new era of freedom of expression. It also meant that G-funk, boom bap and gangster rap quickly hit the airwaves – including the track that made a lasting impression on then-teen Munkherdene: Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

“I realized that I could put my poems to a beat like them, and I started writing rap music,” he recalled in a video interview from his studio in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital.

“We didn’t have a recording studio – there were very few of them and (they were) very expensive. The start of my rap career was very difficult,” he said. “We had no way to make a lot of money, make high quality audio and video, or work with big companies. TV and radio stations were blocking our music and videos. They thought hip-hop was a bad thing.”

“When most people think of Mongolia, they think of wide open expanses, and maybe they’ve heard of a two-humped camel or seen people riding around on horseback…but they never thought about contemporary culture in an urban environment,” De Mora said in a video call from London. “That’s what I wanted to show – that across the world, different things happen where cultures intersect.”

Dealing with social issues

Describing himself as “obsessed with music and subcultures”, De Mora has previously photographed high profile American rappers like Pusha T, MF Doom and members of the Wu-Tang Clan. He often eschews the clichéd tropes of hip-hop photography, an approach maintained during his self-funded trip to Mongolia. While some of the portraits show local rappers showing off their jewelry or posing in – or on – their cars, many are warmer and more playful than the genre usually dictates.

“I try to avoid obvious bravado type portraits,” he said. “It’s kind of funny when you pull out your camera and a guy starts posing, which is good to have a few. But with this project, I wanted to find some more intimate and personal moments.”

Big Gee, whose image appears on the cover of De Mora’s book, also serves as the documentary’s central character and narrator. The questions he addresses tell a larger story about the challenges of life in Ulaanbaatar.

One of Ulaanbaatar’s sprawling ger districts. Credit: Alex de Mora

And, like many Mongolian folk songs, there is another important theme woven through its music: nature.

“I’ve done a couple conservation songs (and I have one called) ‘Leave My Country to Us.’ What is real wealth? Money? Gold? In my opinion, it’s not money, not gold, not bling-bling things, not big chains or big cars. The real wealth is human beings and pure nature.

Portrait of a city

Appropriately, nature is also a central character in De Mora’s photos. Mountains, sand dunes and – on unpolluted days – blue skies are never far away in Ulaanbaatar. A shot shows Big Gee holding an eagle and sitting proudly on the back of a Bactrian camel; others replace the urban settings typical of hip-hop photography with the vast empty landscapes of the outskirts of the city.

“They call (Mongolia) the ‘country of blue skies’ for a very good reason,” De Mora said. “It’s something that makes the photographs themselves very vivid. I’ve never seen so much sunshine and blue skies in my life.”

Although De Mora’s project adopts the perspective of a particular subculture, it is really a broad portrait of the Mongolian capital. His photos paint a larger picture of the city’s diverse inhabitants, with children playing in the streets and an elderly accordion player.

Big Gee poses in front of a statue of Genghis Khan in Ulaanbaatar. Credit: Alex de Mora

In the documentary, meanwhile, images of rappers are intercut with shots of Soviet-style murals, lookalike towers, public statues and fireplaces. The combination of English graffiti and Cyrillic signs hints at the various cultural forces at work in the city.

Aside from a song by young Mongolian rapper Maberrant, played during the closing credits, the soundtrack leans towards folk instruments, wind chimes and eerie natural sounds rather than hip-hop.

“I didn’t want people to watch the movie and judge people by the music,” De Mora said. “I wanted them to watch the film and understand the city and the personality of the people and the place… It was always a portrait of a city, and a culture within a city. It was never going to be a music reviewer or critic.”