A.  He came along at the right time. His methods of battle were right on the mark. If he came along today, he would not be as successful. I think the thing that surprised me the most and gave me an awful lot of respect for him was how strong these people were. And the brilliance. He was a great field general. He supposedly was a very sturdy person, quick of temper, an organizational genius.

You can see it when you cover the territory, when you realize how far the extent of the Mongol Empire was— the greatest land empire ever.

I think the thing that impressed me most was the fabric of this man and the fabric of the people and what he instilled in his friends and family. Absolutely amazing, especially knowing the steppe, knowing their way of life, what they ate, how severe the country was. Genghis went into lands that he had never ventured to before. He had never seen a man-made object like the Great Wall of China. They had never eaten bread; they had never seen vegetables. They had little respect for farmers or peasants. They couldn’t stand people that made their living on their knees.

I’m a little bit taken with the physical attributes of people, and he was one of the finest specimens there were. Tough. Incredible fiber of a man.

A.  I did a fair amount of research with various Ph.D.s and learned scholars before I ever left the building. My research probably took me a solid three months. I wrote a shooting script for myself along with a picture editor, so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. I had probably read ten to twelve of the best books that I could on Genghis Khan plus The Secret History of the Mongols. It’s quite exciting reading; when I started the research I couldn’t set it down.

So by the time you get to an area you have a pretty good idea of what you’re looking for. And then it’s just a matter of finding the very finest action, expression, mood to bring this historic subject to life.

A.  Everything you own, and then you don’t feel for the rest of the trip that you forgot something. There’s quite a bit of equipment. On a massive story like this, you’re not only covering things in the field and things in the rough, but you’re trying to cover as much as you can in museums. Inside gers [felt tents], you’re going to need lights. So my equipment probably totals maybe 600 pounds [272 kilograms] and 12 to 14 cases.

I will leave most of it in the capital or in a hotel. Then I’ll venture out for a week or two weeks into the field and take the bare minimum, which would probably be four or five cases and some food and camping gear. You don’t want to be bogged down with equipment, but you do want to be able to do the best you possibly can in every situation that you face.

It was a two-, two-and-a-half-day trip to Gurvan Nuur, where many believe Genghis Khan was born, and it took us five days to get there. Once we got there, we were stranded because the Onon River had flooded. The ferryboat captain, in trying to untangle some cables during the height of the flood, was whipped overboard, and he drowned. And so we couldn’t get back over the river. So I think the lead picture took me two, two and a half days, and we ended up staying there about nine days because we couldn’t leave.

So, in this case, certainly getting to the subject matter was difficult. Once I arrived on the scene, it was fairly easy.

And the same at sunset. Maybe half an hour to fifteen minutes before sunset and maybe ten or fifteen minutes after. During the day, the light in many of these locations tends to be like a carbon arc. Unless you’re inside a ger [felt tent] or inside tents under cover somewhere, the light is very unromantic, and it doesn’t really have the mood that I need to bring the reader into a historic situation.

So my normal day would normally start around four in the morning, and I would work through until about eight or nine. In fact, we were working sunset, between nine and ten o’clock at night. It’s a long day.

The driver, he was the greatest. He could do anything. He had a certain backbone, and he was a true Mongol. He could fix anything; he could get us out of mud in a way that you would never suggest yourself. He could always find a boulder or a log in order to slip under the wheels. And he could cook, and he was great with people. He would diplomatically open closed doors; had it not been for him, we would have a very short story.

It didn’t take long with them, the Mongols, because, for the most part, they’re a very friendly people. They don’t see that many people, especially out in the Gobi. The people are very interested in my life, so you have to share some tidbits of your existence and where you’re from and also give them an idea of why you’re so interested in their life. And it’s not difficult for me to show my interest, because their life is so much different than ours. We take so much for granted here in the U.S..

And so it didn’t take very long for me to get involved in their way of thinking, their way of working. I try very hard not to get in their way, not to break their train of thought or their stride. Just to record their way of life.

I remember driving from Budapest and just stopping in Muhi. I hadn’t heard anything about it. And when I reached the crest of the hill and I saw this monument in the distance, I just couldn’t believe it. The photograph would have been a fairly normal sunset or moonrise type photograph—moody as I could make it in blues and blacks and so on—but a storm approached at the time of the sunset.

It’s kind of a funny story. I had to rent a ladder, or borrow a ladder, from a nearby farmer to get up close and as high as that man was chained to that cross. And I needed to light the subject because there just wasn’t enough light on that wood carving, so I had the taxi driver and my assistant (who was an interpreter from the government) holding these 25-foot [7-meter] aluminum light stands with strobe lights on the ends of them. The storm, approaching from the right, was tearing trees; it was pulling trees right out of the ground. It was maybe 200 feet [61 meters] away from me, and I wanted to wait for lightning.

I remember the interpreter clearing his throat saying, “Mister Jim, don’t you think we have enough?” And I wanted lightning in the photograph so badly. Finally the heavens opened, and we got so wet that the lights would no longer work and my cameras were getting drenched and we had to leave. But that’s probably the most memorable picture in the entire coverage.

A.  It takes a special kind of a person. If you look at the Geographic photographers, they have something that’s quite rare. They have a very inquisitive mind, they have a very quick eye, they’re very sensitive, they have a great deal of taste. I think they know the direction that they’re moving in and want to move in. They’re very decisive. For the most part, they’re a driven artist.

You’re not going to deter them. That photographer is not going to take no for an answer, especially on a subject like this where the logistics were so excruciatingly painful. I just cannot be defeated.

I’ve had subjects turn to my interpreter and say, “Your friend looks at me like he’s going to eat me,” because I’m studying their facial expressions and their gestures and I’m trying to bring all of that together in one photograph.

We want a photograph to stand by itself where it wouldn’t even need a caption and you know exactly where that fellow lives, what kind of personality he or she has. Then I’ve completed my job successfully.