In photographer Kiliii Yüyan’s work, he has drawn on both wilderness survival skills and empathy — qualities he deems “critical” for the projects he embarks on in extreme environments and cultures outside his own.
“Human cultures are the most complicated things to understand,” he says. “Human culture is so rich. There’s so much to it.”
In Part 2 of his appearance on Story Untold, he talks about animism, searching for meaning in his late teens and early twenties, and the importance of representation in journalism.
“In the past, journalists have been known to do a lot of things where they just kind of parachute into a place. There’s a lot of this sort of old-school journalism … like, ‘If I’m a good journalist, I should be able to drop into any place in the world and make a story out of it,'” says Yüyan. “[I think] a good journalist goes in with an openness and an understanding that you don’t know everything — far from it.”

Photo provided by Kiliii Yüyan. Blurb adapted from kiliii.com.