Join Claire Thomas at the Royal Geographical Society on Saturday 18 July at 12 noon for a book signing of her latest work, ‘Altai’
By
Award-winning photographer Claire Thomas will be signing copies of her newly released book, Altai: Hunters and Herders of Mongolia, at the RGS Summit Photo on Saturday 18 July at 12 noon, offering readers, photography enthusiasts, and journalists an opportunity to meet the author and explore a remarkable visual journey into one of the world’s most remote cultures.
Altai: Hunters and Herders of Mongolia is Thomas’s debut photo book. Through a curated selection of images, this volume invites readers into the highlands, homes, and hearts of ethnic Kazakh herders, to witness their ancient tradition of hunting with golden eagles.
Read more of Claire Thomas’s work for Geographical…
- Inside the world of Mongolia’s eagle hunters
- The women banished as witches in West Africa
- The Coptic recyclers of Cairo’s ‘Garbage City’
Claire’s photography pays tribute to ancient practices and living heritage threatened by climate change and urban growth, as they adapt in the name of progress and survival. Altai holds a world in suspension in its pages, inviting us to treasure what is fragile and must be carried forward, and consider how to live in balance with land, animals, and one another.
Claire Thomas is an award-winning Welsh photojournalist, fine art photographer, and writer based between the UK and Egypt. Her work focuses on visual storytelling that explores political and military conflicts, social justice, cultural heritage, and the ways people live in connection with their environments and animals. She is particularly drawn to documenting traditional ways of life shaped by the rhythms of the natural world, an interest that has taken her to some of the most remote and resilient communities on Earth.
Raised in a rural village in South Wales, Claire grew up alongside horses, learning to ride through woodland trails almost as soon as she learned to walk. A childhood spent in the countryside, in such communion with the surrounding landscape and wildlife, fostered a profound appreciation for nature and a passion for photography.
After Claire travelled to Ghana on a volunteer mission supporting women living with HIV/AIDS, her perspective as a photographer sharpened as a means to spotlight urgent global issues. Her photojournalism has since documented armed conflict, displacement, human rights, and environmental injustice, with stories appearing in publications of international acclaim, including The New York Times, The Sunday Times, BBC, National Geographic and Al Jazeera.
Following three years of intensive coverage of the conflict, recovery, and cultural life in northern Iraq, Claire had the opportunity to travel to Mongolia to meet and photograph the iconic Kazakh eagle hunters and semi-nomadic animal herders of the Altai Mountains in 2019. Having gone from Wales to war, and yearning for a narrative rooted in peace, she experienced this as a return to her roots: a tradition of living in harmony with animals and the natural world.
