In Ulaanbaatar, the sun was setting when I sat down on a bench and closed my eyes. A group of boys passed me with a basketball. I followed them - through the alleys, up the hill - until they stopped at a patch of open ground. This was their court.
I played with them. Took their portraits. And then I stepped back, up the slope, and looked out over it all.
The boys.
Their homes.
The city stretched below.
And beyond that - the mountains.
What moved me wasn’t just the playfulness or the view, but the sense that all of it belonged together. That this fragile piece of land - rough, uneven, marked by power lines and old tires - held joy and history at once.
-Jacob Aue Sobol